Snow Conn Power Outages

[Yander]

France’s Restart of Nuclear Reactors Eases Blackout Fears

The country has restarted five reactors over the past week and cut electricity consumption sharply, clearing a threshold for risk of power outages.

www.wsj.com

France isn't exactly in a good spot.

If you read the article it is because they were not maintaining their plant's or missed some maintenance items (i.e. Pipes ) not because they are using nuclear. Their demand issues are also exacerbated by the reduction in natural gas from Russia because of the war.

But this is a good example of how media spins things also. They use sound bites that leave out the details and no one bothers to figure learn the details, they just believe the sound bite blindly. Must be true heard it on the news.

 

[AndyMA]

Sounds good in theory, but energy storage for providing backup to Wind and Solar is not there yet. Wind/Solar are reliable sources of energy, just not feasible for the scale of coal that they are trying to replace.

Wind/Solar do not transport well, it is incredibly hard to transport wind/solar energy long distances. It is the reason you see them popping up everywhere, get used to that.

France is 70% nuclear and have the lowest utility rates of any country I believe. Cook Nuclear in Michigan is the most efficient power producing Plant that AEP owns and, unless it is in outage for maintenance, is always entered into the PJM market due to it's low cost to generate electricity.

Too much media hype and misinformation is out there about renewables just as there is about a lot of things. Is Solar/Wind reliable, yes when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining and you are close to the source of demand and your willing to pay more to generate it. Yep, its reliable.

Power companies are not retiring coal because they want to, they are retiring them because of the hype associated with renewables that the investors want to see in their portfolios.

I'm not sure what you mean by wind/solar energy doesn't transport well. It is no different that electricity produced by any other source. The reason solar fields are distributed is to produce power where it is needed and increase grid stability and reliability. BTW I am an engineer for the second largest solar asset owner in North America. www.conedceb.com

 

[Hay Dude]

Maybe what he means is that it’s power that can’t be created & stored 24/7 without millions spent on batteries to store the energy? A FF plant can make power day/night, wind or no wind.

Some don’t realize that solar panels are not the end of the expenditure. Huge expensive batteries are part of the expense and the mining & manufacturing required to build them is an environmental mess.

We all have to admit that when it comes to wind/solar, we are not being given the downside of them.

We are only given the downside of Fossil and the upside of wind/solar.

That skews the thinking of the young uns a bit…..’specially at the ballot box.

 

[hiddentacocatneddih]

Battieres have a finite life as well. It's not a 1 time investment.

 

[hornett22]

Wind & Solar coupled with energy storage is a very reliable source of energy

 

[hornett22]

Locally the large utilities store power by reversing the hydro-electric generators when demand is low, and pumping water to a paired reservoir at a higher elevation. That's a fairly common way to store hydro-electric energy anywhere there is an elevation difference of a few hundred feet or more.
Capabilities are whatever it is designed to be. Pretty much unlimited.

rScotty

 

[hornett22]

Here ya go. Just one of many being built in progressive CA.

View attachment 776280View attachment 776281

 

[hornett22]

What kind of carbon footprint is being left from the energy needed to produce the drugs these greenies are on?

 

[Chewwy]

. . . Pretty much unlimited. . . .

rScotty

 

[Yander]

Yes I'm familiar with ConEd.

When our company (Not going to say on here you can probably guess) was trying to get approvals to build (or contract the build of) a very large wind farm in Oklahoma, one of the big challenges was getting power to the major city where the energy would be consumed via a large tie line. I don't remember the length but was in the meetings where the engineers expressed this as being one of the things they would have to figure out. Our company is predominately coal and the engineers said that with coal transporting that distance wouldn't be an issue. Don't remember the details of it but perhaps because of the MW out put of wind compared to coal was the difference. It turned out that they didn't get all states to approve the wind farm so it became a moot point. That farm was not built.

They are now building (or Invenergy is) the largest wind farm in North America 1.5MW. Our company has the largest transmission & Distribution network in North America. We are relatively newish to wind/solar but have been doing power for a minute.

Of course I would expect anyone who is working for a Wind/Solar energy company to be pro renewables and so am I to a point. But my concern is there is too much hype about renewables being the savior and people acting like we have the battery and other means of grid reliability figured out when we don't. If we did, you wouldn't see what happened in Texas and what happens in CAL.

Let's not try and paint a rosy picture that doesn't exist, at least not yet. We have battery technology deployed and I've heard it is not going great from the sites we have them in. Though that was three years ago and I realize things are changing rapidly.