storm reports

[Java Jive]

[Andy Burns]

Do the wind capacity figures allow for turbines falling over or bursting into flames?

[Tim Streater]

Plonkers like JJ remind me of the old-style Soviets, in their attitude to resources. Are our Russian-built airliners unreliable? Yes, but we build twice as many as needed to cover that point.

It's the same with wind: as it's 100% unreliable, we need 100% of kit as backup waiting to take over (as was necessary for almost the whole month of July this year). So, we pay twice for our generating capacity, and we use twice as much of society's resources as we need to, in order to do so.

[Dave Liquorice]

Not sure a coal plant that had to shut down in similar circumstances would come back particularly quickly. Wind would only come back if the wind was blowing (but not too hard).

[The Natural Philosopher]

the real world ones that are shown on the meters do.

the fantasy ones that are calculate by 'experts' to get planning permissiomn assume that the turbines are always working.And teh wind is nearly always blowing

Last planning meeting I attended they claimed a poxy little 50Kw turbine would achieve 40%. Total lie of course.

Palms already greased, donations made and tory party whip in force. They didn't want to hear any objections.

Stricly dead turbines are 'unavailable - the capacity that COULD be working is called 'available capacity' but - and its a big but - that term comes from fossil plant where available means it is really available. With wind, if the wind doesn't blow (hard enough), available capacity has to be modified by the weather forecast. So it adds a whole new dimension of uncertainty. Forecasted generation capacity is often out by a whole power stations worth - you can see the price spikes that happen on the balancing mechanism reports. As Dinorwig steps in and then gas sets are brought up from cold at huge expense and waste of fuel (10,000 euros of gas burnt before a big CCGT even starts generating anything) .

[The Natural Philosopher]

The reasons nuclear takes that long to come up are twofold. Nuclear reactions in current reactors not designed to stop- start punish the chain reaction.

Also, regulation imposed by JJ and his green scaredy cats mean that a whole plethora of box ticking and reports and checks have to be done before they are ALLOWED to reconnect.

A modern fast CCGT takes at least an hour to be fully on stream. Coal takes up to a day of preparation from cold. Mostly coal is throttled back at night, not shut down completely. Oil is similar to coal except we don't burn oil in power stations except in dire emergencies.

wind of course can take a couple of weeks to come on line. If the wind simply isn't blowing.

Looks like Dungeness is still off line as of time of writing - was supposed to half be back on today, but I guess they will wait for Monday now.

[tony sayer]

In article , Java Jive scribeth thus

Well lets see..

As far as we know there was a fault on the 275 kV grid. Now the only bit of that grid was on that site. So are we to assume that the power needed to power the plant came in off the 400 to the 275 and there was NO other source of supply to maintain services on that site?.

No 11 or 33 kV services at all?. No standby generators to keep essential services on the go as if that was the case then thats very poor design of the overall station not it being Nuclear as such.

Or was there some other reasons they just aren't mentioning or making that public or are thy using this incident to do some other works that may have needed doing?..

[The Natural Philosopher]

its not that simple, but yes because there is no POINT in being able to run a powerstation whose output cannot be absorbed.

The moment it lost grid connection it has to be scrammed.

whether it then runs off an auxiliary grid or off diesel is almost irrelevant., At that point it ain't a power station.

yes, diesel standby - several sets - I think at least three these days.

Almost certainly there is some regulation that says 'after scramming the following 3473 boxes have to be ticked'

[Java Jive]

Arguing from bias again ...

Noone is disputing the wider problems with wind, but they are IRRELEVANT to the point I was making, which was quite simply that the same storm that shut down wind turbines for its duration also took out a nuclear power plant for the much longer time of a week. However much you may dislike it, that is a fact.

[Java Jive]

I'd love to think I was that powerful, but I'm not, so don't falsely ascribe any of the following to me.

They are not mine, and they are not "scaredy cats" to use your own school playground style of debate, rather some of them are extremely brave. For example, green protestors trying to protect indigenous peoples' rights in Brazil have been murdered.

Safety first.

Which was exactly my point.

[tony sayer]

.

I wonder if that is the actual reason after all the bit of 275 kV line is very short. I 'm still somewhat surprised that that was affected anyway.

There are Two lumps of that which I think we can reasonably suppose that one circuit/line can take the full operating output..

[The Natural Philosopher]

well after saying one reactor would be up Saturday, then today, still no fscking power from Dungeness..

I guess they only got to 3472 boxes and the last one, which requires unicorn horn and a virgin, proved a little hard to locate on a Saturday night.