Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
From a contrarian perspective which do you think provides a more "stable" grid, a system comprised of hydroelectric turbines and a few nukes or a system comprised of a few less hydroelectric turbines (or a few less nukes) and instead a disparate but overall several thousand acre sprinkling of wind and solar along with the nukes?
There's a perfect case point here in Oz...South Australia has enough installed wind, to completely power the state...on a good day. Here's a map of it, and if you look to the right of the map, the two big interconnectors connect to brown coal centralised generation (lower one), and black coal (upper one).
Generation in state was a coal fired power station (Northern), that will be closed in 6 months, a gas fired thermal, some OCGTs, and crazilly, reciprocating diesel generators.
The wind cannot self excite, so in spite of the green media talking about the state being fully supplied by wind (on certain days), so in order for the wind to even be useful, it needs the brown and black coal at one end of the line, and something thermal at the other end of the line to provide frequency, voltage, governing margin etc.
Windy days, the price goes negative, as the wind energy being harvested over rides the state's usage, and the the thermal back down (but are still needed for voltage and power factor at the remote end)...that's why Northern is closing, it's not viable against the wind...but the wind doesn't provide the grid, so the state will be less robust.
Non windy days, the state rolls at 10c/KWHr because they are importing the majority...$1.00 per KWHr over the peaks is routine (retail price is under 30c). As I posted the other day, they had diesel reciprocators running for a day...that's nuts.
They lose the interconnectors, and the state will go black, pure and simple...the wind can't self excite, they are asynchronous...and the small amount of spinning reserve at the load end will be dragged to a halt in the process.
So in that case, the influx of wind energy has lead to higher retail prices, and a less robust grid.
Back in the bad old days of centralised regulation the process would have happened, but it would have been planned, to keep the fundamentals robust and phase in/out technologies. Current "market forces" (can't say that in a world of subsidies) have too many "lumps" in the process.
