Wind turbines used to absorb a power surplus?...

[Ricky]

On Saturday, March 18, 2023 at 1:00:23 PM UTC-4, Rod Speed wrote:

alan_m <ju...@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote
And in the UK that comes from green tax.

Shouldn\'t that tax be being spent on making more green energy, building
new wind farms?
Shouldn\'t that tax be scrapped to make our bills cheaper.

It used to be spent on giving us all free CFL light bulbs.
And that is a completely insane thing to do, tax everyone,
pump that money thru the bureaucracy and staight back to
precisely the same people that it came from in the first place.

Only advantage is that in theory it forces people to have
CFL light bulbs which they would otherwise not bother
with and might see some use them given they are \'free\'

We were never actually stupid enough to have a green tax
and our electricity suppliers did hand out free CFL light
bulbs. I ony ever used a couple of the dozens I got given.

We were given coupons to buy six packs of several sizes and colors of CFL bulbs when they were still a new thing. I still have most of those. That\'s how long they last. The only ones I\'ve had to replace are the ones I put in enclosed spaces, like inside a globe, that got hot and burnt out. Incandescents work by being so hot they glow. You have to protect the walls and ceilings where you install them. LEDs and CFLs have sensitive electronics that don\'t like being warm, much less hot.

They save enough electricity to pay for themselves in a year or two. Mine have paid for themselves many times over.

--

Rick C.

-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rod Speed]

On Sat, 18 Mar 2023 22:56:18 +1100, Jeff Gaines <jgnewsid@outlook.com>
wrote:

On 18/03/2023 in message <tv467v$2f79h$1@dont-email.me> The Natural
Philosopher wrote:

Shouldn\'t that tax be scrapped to make our bills cheaper.
It used to be spent on giving us all free CFL light bulbs.

Of course it should be, along with all windmills, solar panels and any
feed in tarriffs.

Your confusion arises from the fact they you think they are working for
you. Government is not your friend, or your servant, It\'s your enemy,
and wants to be your master. Because if it isn\'t it fears you might get
rid of it.

Are you an American?

Nope, a senile rabid pom.

It\'s that sort of argument that makes them feel they need guns to defend
themselves from government (and as a penis substitute of course).

 

[Peeler]

On Sun, 19 Mar 2023 03:54:15 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

<FLUSH the abnormal trolling senile cretin\'s latest trollshit unread>

--
David Plowman about senile Rodent Speed\'s trolling:
\"Wodney is doing a lot of morphing these days. Must be even more desperate
than usual for attention.\"
MID: <59a60da1d9dave@davenoise.co.uk>

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

lørdag den 18. marts 2023 kl. 17.58.47 UTC+1 skrev Ricky:

On Saturday, March 18, 2023 at 12:42:03 PM UTC-4, alan_m wrote:
On 18/03/2023 15:02, micky wrote:

Having a smart meter means they no longer have to send meter readers, so
that saves a lot of money in the long run.
Using your argument about 15 minutes for a smart meter installation per
house not costing a lot the 30 seconds to read a meter once every 12
months means that the payback time for just the labour is more more than
30 years. If the meter takes 1 hour to install the saving payback time
for not having a meter reader is 120 years
It\'s not 30 seconds to read a meter. Try walking from your meter, to your neighbor\'s meter, and to the next, for the block. Many have the meters in the back yard and houses are often far enough apart that the reader has to use a car. I did a paper route, which is even faster and I couldn\'t average 30 seconds per customer.

Why are you talking about 1 reading in 12 months? Here the utilities can estimate bills, but have to read the meter at least six times a year.

here it probably wasn\'t even once a year, they\'d ask you\'d to read the meter instead. Only as a periodic check, moving out, or it the usage was much less that they expected would they come and read it

A gas meter will need a new battery in 10 years, or less
I find it surprising they would have batteries. I\'ve seen discussions where it was said they run on utility power... after the point where the meter is measuring the power. So you pay for the power in the meter.

compared to the gas bill probably not worth worrying about

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 18 Mar 2023 08:07:17 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
<bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, March 18, 2023 at 5:39:12?AM UTC-4, Commander Kinsey wrote:
An electrician (who I don\'t believe) told me if there\'s too much power on the grid, they use wind turbines as fans to absorb extra power. Is this really true? Aren\'t there plenty of power stations they can just turn down a bit? Take your foot off the gas so to speak?

There\'s no such thing as too much power on the grid, only power fluctuation. The larger the average power delivery, the greater the chances of larger fluctuations. The technology for wind turbines to absorb momentary excess grid energy, in a way similar to more conventional power generation, is just now in development and demonstration phase of work.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/wind-turbines-can-stabilize-grid




I was also disturbed to hear from him it costs £700 to install smart meters into each home. And in the UK that comes from green tax. Shouldn\'t that tax be being spent on making more green energy, building new wind farms?

Smart meters are big energy savers. For one thing they eliminate the need for the power company to drive around and read them. They are also less of a drag in energy required to power them. There are other more subtle advantages. Add all this up tens of millions of times over and the savings are huge.

https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/electric-meters

It\'s no big challenge to stabilized the grid on a time scale of
seconds. Weeks and months are the big problem that people will notice.

Wind turbines spin slowly so don\'t store a lot of kinetic energy.
During calms, they store none.

There are synchronous machines that have no drive or load and are used
for power factor correction and transient storage. They can spin fast
so store a lot of energy and can have high peak power in or out.

Given a wind turbine running at full power output, I wonder how many
seconds of output is stored in its kinetic energy, namely how long it
could run its load if the wind suddenly stopped. A few seconds?

 

[alan_m]

On 18/03/2023 16:45, John Larkin wrote:

Does not make any sense. I think it is done with hydroelectric where
water is pumped back up at night when usage is down but what do you
do, pump back wind?

See:
https://www.energy-storage.news/delivering-pumped-hydro-storage-in-the-uk-after-a-three-decade-interlude/

\"Up to days at a time\".

Yep, this 1,500 MW scheme will make up for the UK shortfall when the
wind doesn\'t blow. The difference for the UK wind between blowing and
not blowing is close to 15,000 MW so to just backup the existing
windmills we need 10 of these pumped storage facilities. When even more
windmills are built the shortfall when the wind is absent requires
perhaps 20 to 30 of these facilities. And what happens for when the wind
doesn\'t blow for 14 days and the pumped water head runs dry after a
couple of days?

This scheme probably only makes financial sense if we rely on windmills
where they can sell back the electricity at 10x the going rate when
there is no wind.

--
mailto : news {at} admac {dot} myzen {dot} co {dot} uk

 

[Rod Speed]

On Sun, 19 Mar 2023 02:31:25 +1100, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandsnipmetechnology.com> wrote:

On Sat, 18 Mar 2023 10:49:57 +0000, alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk
wrote:

On 18/03/2023 09:39, Commander Kinsey wrote:

I was also disturbed to hear from him it costs £700 to install smart
meters into each home.

Possibly a bit more for both gas and electricity but around the right
ball park figure.

It\'s always been the case that they had to replace non-smart meters
every so often - at one time I think the target was every 10 years. I
had a friend who worked for BG and one of his jobs was to organise
routine meter replacements (long before smart meters). When it became my
turn to have my gas meter replaced I somehow managed to get an
appointment that suited me

And in the UK that comes from green tax.
Shouldn\'t that tax be being spent on making more green energy, building
new wind farms?

Windmills will still be useless when there\'s no wind. Pity that
there\'s no good way to store electricity.

There is, pumped hydro. Problem is that
the UK has fuck all suitable sites for that.

Shouldn\'t that tax be scrapped to make our bills cheaper.
It used to be spent on giving us all free CFL light bulbs.

Smart meters eliminated meter reader people too. Reading a meter could
be a real hassle in many situations. Some utilities only did it a few
times a year and interpolated/extrapolated the monthly bills. At our
cabin in the mountains, the old meters were buried in snow for months.
Now I can ask for a realtime graph of power or gas or water use; we
spotted a water leak that way.

We do get free LED bulbs and Christmas lights from TDPUD!

The long feeder from the street came down, and they fixed that for
free too.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p6s7l66iq9xy9nt/Fascia_2.jpg?raw=1

 

[Rod Speed]

alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote

micky wrote

Having a smart meter means they no longer have to send meter readers, so
that saves a lot of money in the long run.

Using your argument about 15 minutes for a smart meter installation per
house not costing a lot the 30 seconds to read a meter once every 12
months

Ours are read 4 times a year and it takes a lot more than 30 seconds to
read.

means that the payback time for just the labour is more more than 30
years.

5 years is more realistic.

If the meter takes 1 hour to install the saving payback time for not
having a meter reader is 120 years

A gas meter will need a new battery in 10 years, or less

 

[alan_m]

On 18/03/2023 17:01, John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 18 Mar 2023 16:23:07 +0000, alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk
wrote:

On 18/03/2023 15:31, John Larkin wrote:

We do get free LED bulbs and Christmas lights from TDPUD!

No you don\'t. The only way they reach you from the money you pay either
by a company overcharging or from taxation

The LEDs save energy so make everyone\'s costs go down.

But you probably would have got the bulbs cheaper by purchasing them
yourself rather than overpaying on your bills and then being given some
of your own money back (via bulbs) minus an administration charge.

There was never \"FREE\" LED bulbs - you just paid for them in a
convoluted way.

We only have a few incandescents left. Either old, very rarely used
bulbs, or one small incandescent on a string of LEDs to make them dim
properly. Some \"dimmable\" LEDs and some dimmers don\'t work together.

The only incandescent bulb I have is in the microwave, I have 2 CFL in
the loft and switched on perhaps twice a year for 10 minutes at a time,
all the rest are LED.

--
mailto : news {at} admac {dot} myzen {dot} co {dot} uk

 

[Ed Lee]

On Saturday, March 18, 2023 at 10:24:06 AM UTC-7, alan_m wrote:

On 18/03/2023 16:45, John Larkin wrote:


Does not make any sense. I think it is done with hydroelectric where
water is pumped back up at night when usage is down but what do you
do, pump back wind?

See:
https://www.energy-storage.news/delivering-pumped-hydro-storage-in-the-uk-after-a-three-decade-interlude/

\"Up to days at a time\".

Yep, this 1,500 MW scheme will make up for the UK shortfall when the
wind doesn\'t blow. The difference for the UK wind between blowing and
not blowing is close to 15,000 MW so to just backup the existing
windmills we need 10 of these pumped storage facilities. When even more
windmills are built the shortfall when the wind is absent requires
perhaps 20 to 30 of these facilities. And what happens for when the wind
doesn\'t blow for 14 days and the pumped water head runs dry after a
couple of days?

A few days buy you enough time to start/stop oil/gas generators.

 

[Cindy Hamilton]

On 2023-03-18, alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote:

On 18/03/2023 15:02, micky wrote:

Having a smart meter means they no longer have to send meter readers, so
that saves a lot of money in the long run.

Using your argument about 15 minutes for a smart meter installation per
house not costing a lot the 30 seconds to read a meter once every 12
months

Prior to smart meters, ours were read once a month. The meter reader
had to trudge from house to house--they\'re about 40 meters apart on
my road, although it\'s twice that from my house to the one to the
south. Multiply that by 155 million customers in the U.S. It adds up.

means that the payback time for just the labour is more more than
30 years. If the meter takes 1 hour to install the saving payback time
for not having a meter reader is 120 years

There are other advantages for the consumer and for the power company.
I can find out what I\'m drawing in much more detail, so I can see
how much it costs to run various appliances. The power company has
implemented time-of-day pricing, now that it has that information.

--
Cindy Hamilton

 

[Tim+]

alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote:

The only incandescent bulb I have is in the microwave,

What kind of bulb do you have in your oven?

Tim


--
Please don\'t feed the trolls

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 18 Mar 2023 17:36:50 +0000, alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk>
wrote:

On 18/03/2023 17:01, John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 18 Mar 2023 16:23:07 +0000, alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk
wrote:

On 18/03/2023 15:31, John Larkin wrote:

We do get free LED bulbs and Christmas lights from TDPUD!

No you don\'t. The only way they reach you from the money you pay either
by a company overcharging or from taxation

The LEDs save energy so make everyone\'s costs go down.

But you probably would have got the bulbs cheaper by purchasing them
yourself rather than overpaying on your bills and then being given some
of your own money back (via bulbs) minus an administration charge.

If I pick up a few free bulbs, I don\'t think my electric bill will go
up. Statistically, it probably goes down.

There was never \"FREE\" LED bulbs - you just paid for them in a
convoluted way.


We only have a few incandescents left. Either old, very rarely used
bulbs, or one small incandescent on a string of LEDs to make them dim
properly. Some \"dimmable\" LEDs and some dimmers don\'t work together.

The only incandescent bulb I have is in the microwave, I have 2 CFL in
the loft and switched on perhaps twice a year for 10 minutes at a time,
all the rest are LED.

CFLs fail when the electrolytic caps blow up, usually from turn-on
surge. Sometimes the tube fails.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 18 Mar 2023 17:23:59 +0000, alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk>
wrote:

On 18/03/2023 16:45, John Larkin wrote:


Does not make any sense. I think it is done with hydroelectric where
water is pumped back up at night when usage is down but what do you
do, pump back wind?

See:
https://www.energy-storage.news/delivering-pumped-hydro-storage-in-the-uk-after-a-three-decade-interlude/

\"Up to days at a time\".


Yep, this 1,500 MW scheme will make up for the UK shortfall when the
wind doesn\'t blow. The difference for the UK wind between blowing and
not blowing is close to 15,000 MW so to just backup the existing
windmills we need 10 of these pumped storage facilities. When even more
windmills are built the shortfall when the wind is absent requires
perhaps 20 to 30 of these facilities. And what happens for when the wind
doesn\'t blow for 14 days and the pumped water head runs dry after a
couple of days?

Elections.

 

[Peeler]

On Sun, 19 Mar 2023 04:09:25 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

<FLUSH the abnormal trolling senile cretin\'s latest trollshit unread>

--
Bod addressing senile Rodent Speed:
\"Rod, you have a sick twisted mind. I suggest you stop your mindless
and totally irresponsible talk. Your mouth could get you into a lot of
trouble.\"
MID: <gfbb94Fb4a4U1@mid.individual.net>

 

[Peeler]

On Sun, 19 Mar 2023 04:25:07 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

<FLUSH the abnormal trolling senile cretin\'s latest trollshit unread>

--
Richard about senile Rodent:
\"Rod Speed, a bare faced pig and ignorant twat.\"
MID: <r5uoe4$1kqo$2@gioia.aioe.org>

 

[Peeler]

On Sun, 19 Mar 2023 04:00:13 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

<FLUSH the abnormal trolling senile cretin\'s latest trollshit unread>

--
Tim+ about trolling Rodent Speed:
He is by far the most persistent troll who seems to be able to get under the
skin of folk who really should know better. Since when did arguing with a
troll ever achieve anything (beyond giving the troll pleasure)?
MID: <1421057667.659518815.743467.tim.downie-gmail.com@news.individual.net>

 

[Peeler]

On Sun, 19 Mar 2023 04:34:37 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

<FLUSH the abnormal trolling senile cretin\'s latest trollshit unread>

--
pamela about Rodent Speed:
\"His off the cuff expertise demonstrates how little he knows...\"
MID: <XnsA90B720A381A2D4AM2@81.171.92.183>

 

[Jack Harry Teesdale]

On 18/03/2023 17:00, Rod Speed wrote:

alan_m <junk@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote

And in the UK that comes from green tax.

Shouldn\'t that tax be being spent on making more green energy,
building new wind farms?

Shouldn\'t that tax be scrapped to make our bills cheaper.

It used to be spent on giving us all free CFL light bulbs.

And that is a completely insane thing to do, tax everyone,
pump that money thru the bureaucracy and staight back to
precisely the same people that it came from in the first place.

Only advantage is that in theory it forces people to have
CFL light bulbs which they would otherwise not bother
with and might see some use them given they are \'free\'

We were never actually stupid enough to have a green tax
and our electricity suppliers did hand out free CFL light
bulbs. I ony ever used a couple of the dozens I got given.

There are probably thousands of CFL\'s in their original boxes stored in
cupboards in houses in the UK that have NEVER been used!

 

[Ricky]

On Saturday, March 18, 2023 at 1:16:31 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 18 Mar 2023 08:07:17 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Saturday, March 18, 2023 at 5:39:12?AM UTC-4, Commander Kinsey wrote:
An electrician (who I don\'t believe) told me if there\'s too much power on the grid, they use wind turbines as fans to absorb extra power. Is this really true? Aren\'t there plenty of power stations they can just turn down a bit? Take your foot off the gas so to speak?

There\'s no such thing as too much power on the grid, only power fluctuation. The larger the average power delivery, the greater the chances of larger fluctuations. The technology for wind turbines to absorb momentary excess grid energy, in a way similar to more conventional power generation, is just now in development and demonstration phase of work.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/wind-turbines-can-stabilize-grid




I was also disturbed to hear from him it costs £700 to install smart meters into each home. And in the UK that comes from green tax. Shouldn\'t that tax be being spent on making more green energy, building new wind farms?

Smart meters are big energy savers. For one thing they eliminate the need for the power company to drive around and read them. They are also less of a drag in energy required to power them. There are other more subtle advantages. Add all this up tens of millions of times over and the savings are huge.

https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/electric-meters

It\'s no big challenge to stabilized the grid on a time scale of
seconds. Weeks and months are the big problem that people will notice.

Not sure what that means. All power sources can be adjusted over weeks and months, but this is probably Larkin\'s way of leaving the door open to bash renewable power.

It is the daily cycle that costs so much money to mitigate. Some energy sources like nuclear, can\'t be easily adjusted over the course of a day. Coal is hard to adjust in less than a few hours. Gas can do better, but there are different types of gas generation and have different response times.

Wind turbines spin slowly so don\'t store a lot of kinetic energy.
During calms, they store none.

There are synchronous machines that have no drive or load and are used
for power factor correction and transient storage. They can spin fast
so store a lot of energy and can have high peak power in or out.

Given a wind turbine running at full power output, I wonder how many
seconds of output is stored in its kinetic energy, namely how long it
could run its load if the wind suddenly stopped. A few seconds?

That\'s often all that is needed to smooth out the power fluctuations. The battery facilities are capable of powering the grid for minutes or hours, not days, yet they do a LOT to help stabilize the grid where they are used. And that\'s with a portion of the capacity being used for arbitrage.

--

Rick C.

+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209