Wind turbines used to absorb a power surplus?

Why the f*ck don't they plug it in? For example my (ex) gas meter is right next to the electric box, just run a 5V cable between the meters so one can power the other! Or be clever and generate power from the moving gas.

Why do they need to read them once a month? And why couldn't you have done it?

There are no advantages to me.

Only if it measures each appliance. Although my electric company seems to try to guess - they must assume lights are on in darkness, heating is on more when the weather is colder, so they compare the change in current at didfferent times to work out what appliance it was.

That is the only point of these meters. Mind you, that could easily be done without them being smart. They could just count more "units" at peak rate. When I had a two rate meter, it had a timer and gave me two total readings. They should have just given me a discount for evenings/nights/weekends by making the units count slower.

If you think of a car engine idling, when you turn the lights on and off, you hear the engine changing speed due to the alternator putting less load on it. So unless you change the throttle, the frequency would change. Since power stations are steam driven, I guess perhaps you could have a throttle in the pipe of steam feeding it? You could also turn down the gas jets to heat the boiler appropriately.

Of course it is. a boiler and turbine hall is a pleasantly warm place to be, but it is nothing like standing inside a gigawatt coal boiler

Not my car. It has an engine control computer and servos to a constant idle RPM.

Of course steam plants have throttle valves and feedwater controls and burner controls. Lots of other valves.

Once a generator is connected to the grid, the rotor spins in sync with the rest of the country. After that, one adjusts the steam flow and the field excitation to tune power in/out and power factor.

The synchronization process is interesting... I used to do it by hand and later designed a synchroscope/synchronizer. It can get dramatic if you do it wrong.

It's like flying a plane, where you have the elevator and the throttle interacting. It's counter-intuitive to beginners.

Oh, the 5G thing explains why I've been so tired lately.

Steam plant is locked to the mains. It does not change speed. At most as the steam is fed in, it advances the phase angle to feed more current into the grid.

An noted, it's counter-intuitive to beginners. Steam adjusts power (think conservation of energy) and field current adjusts phase angle, which is why there are rotating machines with no mechanical input or output, used only for system power factor tweaking, like a giant capacitor.

Most generators are run near unity power factor, zero phase angle.

In fact the actual phase angle differences are minute. On a perfect generator that would be nil, but internal resistance allows a little phase angle to develop

I'm with Ed on this subthread.

I don't have his experience with boilers, but I do have a wood burning stove in my house.

To get it from cold up to heat takes half an hour or so. Once it's burning properly I can throttle it back to perhaps 20% of output, and it will tick along nicely.

Any less than that and it starts to gradually go out. It'll take a long time - a good load of wood will still be smouldering the next morning - but from that smouldering state it takes a while to get going at full power again.

I _can_ _not_ turn it up and down every couple of minutes. Even though I have complete control over the airflow it takes a while to change.

If it was feeding a steam boiler there would be more energy in the pressurised steam to act as a buffer - but even then you can't go from "hot, but burning negligible fuel" up to a steady state full power output really quickly.

Incidentally I've recently heard that there's a suggestion that the rare metals for batteries may be obtained by strip mining the deep sea floor. I'm sure that that won't affect any of the rare animals that live down there, nor disturb the methane clathrates and release enormous quantities of greenhouse gases. Much...

Andy

One figure of merit for a big steam boiler is turndown ratio, how low the fuel burn can go compared to max. They usually have multiple burners so that helps.

Our Bosch kitchen stove has a great turndown ratio, with essntially multiple concentric gas burners per flame.

I don't believe you, they must absorb some of the air speed.

By "Katy Human"? What kind of a surname is that?

Downwind indeed. Then they were badly positioned.

Who's to say we want to stop it?

What kind of first name is "Commander"?

Do they look alike?

Why can't they make the generator exert more torque so it slows to an acceptable RPM?

My neighbour in the 90s had a 20kW huge water tank which turned on by radio signal from the electricity board. It heated his house with radiators.

Water powered air conditioning?! Water isn't cold enough.

The only reason for green stuff is for when oil and gas run out.

At the moment the reason seems to be because of a childish argument with Russia and their gas supply. The Ukraine ought to get back in the USSR where it belongs.

There's a bunch on the hills near me which never all turn at the same speed. Some 5 times faster than others.

Funny, I have some diesel in a gerry can here, it isn't gunk at room temperature.