The transition

RunForTheHills said:
Small modular nuclear reactors are 5-10 years away. They are already planning and funding these projects. I am not a fan of AI data centers initiative/bubble, but they are being built and solar isn't going to power them. Data centers need high density uninterrupted power.
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the wind farm at "Gala"^ VA is supposedly to power a data center.
 
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Wind turbines break down often and have a finite life. If they are on the grid, guess who is going to pay for the maintenance and replacement? At least with SMNR, the company can be required to buy them, own them, maintain them, and replace them when needed.
 
stompandgo said:
Wind turbines break down often and have a finite life. If they are on the grid, guess who is going to pay for the maintenance and replacement? At least with SMNR, the company can be required to buy them, own them, maintain them, and replace them when needed.
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The reliability of wind definitely lags at roughly 1.5x the rate of coal downtime. Not sure how that translates to $$ as our coal plants age and have higher operational stress since they get cycled down when cheaper solar/wind production peak and then up during off peak times. BTW nuclear is by far the most reliable with essentially zero unscheduled downtime.

And to your point about ratepayers covering the cost. The last coal plant in our state was retired last December by the owner with plans to convert it to LNG and reopen in 2028. The DOE has ordered it to stay open through successive 90 day emergency orders. We are about to start the 3rd 90 day 'emergency' ...

Plant owner, Calgary-based TransAlta, filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in April to charge ratepayers $20 million to cover the cost of keeping the plant ready to run during the first 90-day order. The company estimated it would have to perform $23 million in repairs if the Department of Energy keeps ordering it to remain operational.

Of course, everybody is in court about it, so the cost will only go up although we don't know yet what combination of ratepayer vs taxpayers will pay the bulk of it.
 
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So SMNR are 10~15 years out still? Well we should have fusion power by then surely. It's only a decade away 😉
Here is a year old article on Dunkelflaute, quite a Buzz word in renewable circles now. Much higher prices for electricity is just the price some have to pay for innovation, we're not going to revolutionize the planet and colonize Mars by being cheapskates.

www.woodmac.com

Wood Mackenzie Study Reveals Critical Risks of Europe's "Dunkelflaute" Renewable Energy Droughts

A comprehensive new study by Wood Mackenzie reveals the growing challenge of "dunkelflaute" – prolonged periods of low wind and solar generation – as Europe transitions to renewable-dominated power systems. The research shows these events are driving extreme price volatility and exposing...
www.woodmac.com www.woodmac.com
 
The old trick of reducing drastic inherent issues to a cute little meme, Dunkelfaute.

My babies life support failed.

Thats Dunkelfaute for you, hes a mysterious little scamp isnt he
 
BlackHand said:
The reliability of wind definitely lags at roughly 1.5x the rate of coal downtime. Not sure how that translates to $$ as our coal plants age and have higher operational stress since they get cycled down when cheaper solar/wind production peak and then up during off peak times. BTW nuclear is by far the most reliable with essentially zero unscheduled downtime.

And to your point about ratepayers covering the cost. The last coal plant in our state was retired last December by the owner with plans to convert it to LNG and reopen in 2028. The DOE has ordered it to stay open through successive 90 day emergency orders. We are about to start the 3rd 90 day 'emergency' ...

Plant owner, Calgary-based TransAlta, filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in April to charge ratepayers $20 million to cover the cost of keeping the plant ready to run during the first 90-day order. The company estimated it would have to perform $23 million in repairs if the Department of Energy keeps ordering it to remain operational.

Of course, everybody is in court about it, so the cost will only go up although we don't know yet what combination of ratepayer vs taxpayers will pay the bulk of it.
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Out here on the sandbar, we have one main generation plant with three generators. The oldest one is fuel oil only. The other two are multi-fuel, oil or natural gas. We have wind and solar too, which add another 20% or so of capacity. Wind makes a lot of sense here, just not in the ocean. Residential solar can, depending on siting. We have a number of gigawatt solar farms, which don't make sense to me. Land is scarce here. Maybe on top of a mummified landfill on town-owned land. Ripping up forest on town-owned or privately owned land, no way. If there were no vegetation here, we would be under water.
 
I was just reading up on Canada's SMR, the first being built in the West. They have just laid the 1000 ton slab for their, 300 MW one. About 1/3 the power output of their conventional ones. They are building four together with shared cooling infrastructure. Looks like SMR is turning into a brand name, not necessarily a literal description of a product. Good on the Canadians for pioneering the deployment of this stuff in the West, and rebranding them might put the anti-nuclear lobby on the back foot for a while. Russia has a floating 11MW one already and China's first is due to be online in a few months.

What's really interesting is a Russian compact unattended micro-nuclear reactor being developed. The ELENA Reactor. If produced, It'll have a natural cooling cycle and use thermo-electric generators to produce 68 kW of power, enough for a little town. Operating for 25 years on a single fuel load and with no personnel in attendance. They did the early work on those RTGs which while very effective proved to be a danger if they were abandoned at end of life, which many were.
 
PEN faults. Not an issue in countries that have the three pin plugs, one a dedicated Earth.
A good video, the Whole thing is just a big experiment isn't it. In the beginning there few few solar panels and no problems, now there are Many and now the problems are becoming evident. More complexity = more unreliability.
 
In the US each electrical service.. residential included, have their own mechanical earth ground installed at the main panel. Whether it a copper water main, ground rods, a wire ring or combination.
Pen faults are not an issue and chargers are not required to shut down.
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In the UK a buck/boost transformer installed on the charger supply line can keep the voltage within limits and we use them here all the time on voltage sensitive equipment. No need to install a d_bag solution like an electric heated shower and hope the current draw is sufficient to drop the voltage to within limits.
 
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Gionnirocket said:
The most sensible would be to get a battery power wall and divert the over_volt extra current there for your own use and backup.
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Well not necessarily the most sensible solution economically. Here they cost over 10 grand, that's a lot of electricity consumption! Plus to get a rebate a lot of the installs come with a clause now that says they can drain your battery if they 'need' the power, so they drain it during a peak time in the evening say and by 10pm it's too low to run your A/C unit. When it comes to residential they have set a lot of traps and solar is not the WoW install it was 10 years ago. I have two separate systems and come Summer I'll throw the DC breaker on one since I'm basically just giving them the power for free now. That will give one inverter a rest so to speak. If it was practical I'd get up there and cover the panels too!
 
LandoftheGiants said:
If produced, It'll have a natural cooling cycle and use thermo-electric generators to produce 68 kW of power, enough for a little town.
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The average home consumes about 30kwh per day, so if that was all smoothed out and uniform somehow that would power fifty homes. So a very little town,

The reality is that electricity consumption is never smoothed out and uniform and in practice peak demand can be on the order of 10kw to 15kw. So in that case seven to fifteen homes. An even smaller "town".

I do like the Russian designs that use liquid lead as a moderator and coolant. What you get is a pretty efficient fission reactor that has very few moving parts and the coolant itself effectively reflects neutrons so it can't become very radioactive at all. And if you get a coolant leak you can clean it up with a dustbuster. The downside is that it is impossible to shut such a reactor down, because the lead freezes and the reactor stops working.
 
stompandgo said:
Never install a smart thermostat from your power delivery company.
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I have 3 high end touch-screen t_stats I got for free or less than $20 from our delivery company.
They're excellent and continued participation is not required. If you do want to participate, local override is easily done at the stat or with the app.
ymmv
 
Gionnirocket said:
I have 3 high end touch-screen t_stats I got for free or less than $20 from our delivery company.
They're excellent and continued participation is not required. If you do want to participate, local override is easily done at the stat or with the app.
ymmv
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You have more trust in your delivery company than I do. Overrides are easily overridden. Nobody but me is going to adjust my thermostat.
 
Weve had one of the UKs biggest windfarm just off the beach for a good 30 years, Ive always thought theres obviously huge cables running along the sea bottom back to shore, I cant work out where they land.
Searching gives nothing helpful, I hope theyre all still waterproof.
Just going for a swim de...bzzzzzzzz,

Did an AI search they come on shore in Wales 25km away.

The UK's opera- tional offshore wind farms are using 62 export cables totalling a length of 1,499km. The voltage levels of these cables range from 33kV for near- shore wind farms without offshore substations, and up to 132kV, 150kV and 220kV for further- offshore sites with one or two substations.
 
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