Western Australia powers up 10MW solar farm

[Mike Tomlinson]

[Nightjar]

80 hectares of panels dedicated to a single customer in an area that is rain-free for 80% of the year. I wonder how much of the output of the desalination plant will be needed to keep the panels clean?

Colin Bignell

[Huge]

[harry]

From the same source.

[Martin Brown]

last one really is ironic. A triumph of spot market forces rip-off merchants over what would otherwise be an efficient peak load support.

PV is ideally suited to lopping the top off peak demand at midday.

In very hot sunny countries solar PV peak output coincides with peak demand for aircon and the PV solar units on the roof also provide a second skin that slows heat ingress. It should be a win-win until the spivs and speculators get involved in rigging the market.

I actually don't see how they can ever police this since anyone with any sense will merely have their solar PV disconnected from the external grid and apparently just not use their aircon as much.

[Brian Gaff]

and which days will it actually be working I wonder?

Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

What peak demand at midday is that?

I am not sure that is correct at all. I seem to remember worst case heat in the tropics being siesta time. Later afternoon.

[Alan Braggins]

And with 80% rain free days, it will be working most days.

[Martin Brown]

>>>>>> That last one really is ironic. A triumph of spot market forces

The one caused by aircons, industry and cooking the midday meal.

Rough working number something like 3pm local time is warmest when the sun is about 30 degrees past transit so the panels are still at 86% of max output (assuming they face south) and they could be installed to give peak output at the time of peak load. They are a reasonable option in places where the sun shines a lot - especially when used off grid.

How hot it *feels* depends a lot on the relative humidity.

UK power requirements tend to peak around 5-6pm for cooking the evening meal but then we are hardly a tropical nation.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Alan Braggins writes

This got me thinking. Obviously, the output from the panels will be DC. Presumably it's converted to AC for running the desal plant; how do you convert 10MW from DC to AC, and what would the losses be?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Choppers.

and what would the losses be?

Not too bad. Something around 95% or better conversion efficiency.

10MW is not big power these days.

[polygonum]

Why?

Do we know what technology desalination plant they use?

Can it *really* be sensible to convert insolation to electricity to run desalination? The only plant I knew anything about used flash distillation - would not direct heating be more efficient?

[Andy Burns]

The solar panels are 550km from the desalination plant ...

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Andy Burns writes

so presumably they convert to AC near the panels to avoid losses in DC transmission?

[Andy Burns]

Bound to, not that it's the AC-ness itself that reduces the losses, just the ability to use transformers to lower the current.

Essentially the solar farm is just feeding into the grid like any other, it won't specifically be powering the desalination plant.

[The Natural Philosopher]

What losses in DC transmission would those be?

AC is used because it makes voltage transformation easy, not because its lower loss than DC. It is in fact higher.

[John Williamson]

DC transmission may lose less than AC. That's why the cross channel links use DC with rectification and inverters at each end. The only time AC is better is when you need to change voltage during transmission.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Andy Burns writes

from the original link:

"However, its output is committed to powering the state?s Binningup water desalination plant, according to the ABC."

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , The Natural Philosopher writes

Thanks. I was thinking of Tesla vs. Edison. Tesla advocated AC transmission because it made it possible to put power stations further away from cities. Edison, who advocated DC, would have had to site power stations much closer to, or within, cities.

said that, I'd forgotten that some of the newer submarine cables between the UK and the continent use high-voltage DC because it's more efficient.

[charles]

If it was ac, we'd have to phase our generating plant to the French ones.