Pink sky over a power station

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Specifically Wallerawang Power Station, what you see here will be gone in a year's time give or take.

Had to pull in to a noise barrier to get something like a decent direction of it and the Eastern sky
 
Originally Posted By: SubieRubyRoo
Huh. Closed due to "dwindling energy demand" in 2014... that's just a little different than Al Gore's official narrative?


GFC crashed demand in Oz.
 
The stacks are still up I see. The Ontario government was SUPER keen to get the ones at Nanticoke down so that subsequent governments couldn't bring it back online.
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
The stacks are still up I see. The Ontario government was SUPER keen to get the ones at Nanticoke down so that subsequent governments couldn't bring it back online.

I am super glad though, the late 90's were the worst for air pollution with lots of smog days. 20+ per summer, and after it closed its a down to a few per year.
It made no sense to have Canada's largest pollution emitter upwind of Canada's largest city...
 
Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
The stacks are still up I see. The Ontario government was SUPER keen to get the ones at Nanticoke down so that subsequent governments couldn't bring it back online.

I am super glad though, the late 90's were the worst for air pollution with lots of smog days. 20+ per summer, and after it closed its a down to a few per year.
It made no sense to have Canada's largest pollution emitter upwind of Canada's largest city...


Nanticoke has only been offline since 2013
wink.gif


Realistically, it could have (I'm not saying it SHOULD have) been fitted with scrubbers. It represented 4,000MW of very cheap generation, but its existence didn't make sense if it could be replaced with something cleaner, which it ultimately was. 75% of its capacity was replaced by the reactivation and refurbishment of Bruce "A". Higher prices, driving down demand in the province made the remaining 25% insignificant.

Think about this though:
OPG laid up Bruce A after units 1 and 2 needed work. That slack was taken up with coal. Pickering is also down two units, likely also replaced with coal. There was a period where any increase in rates was seen as a kiss of death for reelection, and so no government was willing to take that on. So rather than repair the existing "green" generation we had, they simply replaced it with existing coal capacity, something we had a significant quantity of.

Then, we discovered that rates really weren't something that were guaranteed to take a party down. McGuinty was proof of that with the GEA, which went the complete opposite direction and still achieved bugger-all on the pollution front, as the vast majority of that credit goes to Bruce Power. Here we are with now 63% of our power from Nuclear; 87% from Nuclear and Hydro, all of which were existing assets that had just been neglected and the former was vowed to be stamped out, comically enough! We went on this wild magic detour only to end up spending obscene amounts of money on contracts for gear that at the end of the day contribute very little to the grid, but significantly to our cost as ratepayers.

Was it OPG; Ontario Hydro at the time, that allowed the existing assets to degrade, or do you think its hands were forced by the folks in power, similar to how we've been forced to bear the brunt of this lunatic policy for the last 14 years?

Also food for thought: Why could Nanticoke not be converted to gas? Would have saved building all the new gas plants and it, being an OPG asset, wouldn't be subject to the obscene subsidized rates paid to private generators.
 
Originally Posted By: Shannow


Specifically Wallerawang Power Station, what you see here will be gone in a year's time give or take.

Had to pull in to a noise barrier to get something like a decent direction of it and the Eastern sky


Quite difficult to get clear shots of the local coal fired station here too. Usually too much haze. Dunno how much of that is self-generated though, since there are a lot of other sources near and far.

Don't think I have any right now but I might take a drive later in the week and get some.

Oh wait...

No sunset, and its quite a lot uglier.

4649893416_d6ee47bc11.jpg



I mean the powerstation, though the car is a fair bit uglier now too.
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Originally Posted By: IndyIan
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
The stacks are still up I see. The Ontario government was SUPER keen to get the ones at Nanticoke down so that subsequent governments couldn't bring it back online.

I am super glad though, the late 90's were the worst for air pollution with lots of smog days. 20+ per summer, and after it closed its a down to a few per year.
It made no sense to have Canada's largest pollution emitter upwind of Canada's largest city...


Nanticoke has only been offline since 2013
wink.gif



I'm getting old and my decades mixed up!
http://www.airqualityontario.com/history/aqi_advisories_stats.php?t=1
The data does look a bit fishy as after 2014 there's no alerts anywhere, and at one point I tried to find if the criteria had changed to delineate a smog alert, but didn't find anything.
I agree though, that the electricity system hasn't been managed well... If only the conservatives in this province would pick someone half competent for leader... I might even vote for them, as the Libs do need to go for a term.
 
Originally Posted By: IndyIan

The data does look a bit fishy as after 2014 there's no alerts anywhere, and at one point I tried to find if the criteria had changed to delineate a smog alert, but didn't find anything.


Not only is it fishy, look at 2011. Then look at 2012. 2012 was the worst year since 2008. In 2012, most of Nanticoke was already offline:



Originally Posted By: IndyIan
I agree though, that the electricity system hasn't been managed well... If only the conservatives in this province would pick someone half competent for leader... I might even vote for them, as the Libs do need to go for a term.


You are being far too kind. It's an absolute disaster with no plan going forward to make it better, only significantly worse.
 
Originally Posted By: BrocLuno
Whatever the "Greenies" can do to drive up rates (to force conservation ...) is the way we are all going ...
frown.gif





The greenies would love it if we went back 200 years and lived with candles.
 
Yeah but then how will all the greenies make posts every 7 seconds to their social media accounts that nobody with half a brain gives a [censored] about?

I'm starting to think there needs to be a minimum age limit for owning a cell phone, like 21 as well. Because when you combine cell phones, social media, and teens the result is far more damage than the other stuff that is being complained about these days IMO.

It seems to me that every so often, electricity usage, just like IC power usage, runs in waves. When a new technology that uses electricity comes out, usage spikes. As the technology matures and becomes more efficient, energy usage per device comes down for the relative performance. Then the next "new" thing comes out and drives usage up again, only to repeat this cycle. If you took the relative performance of a Pentium 300 vs. the watts it consumed, and compared to the performance of an i7-8700K, the Pentium would likely use the equivalent of about 1.21 Jigawatts compared to the new i7! The biggest thing driving electrical consumption is not the overall usage of the devices, it's that countries like China and Russia are driving their expectation of living up and getting more "things" that use electricity. So there is no real way to put that genie back in the bottle- all we can do now is keep finding new ways to make devices more efficient and better storage techniques. Solar, wind, and hydro are all great things but still a pain, and entirely dependent on the environment.
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
The stacks are still up I see. The Ontario government was SUPER keen to get the ones at Nanticoke down so that subsequent governments couldn't bring it back online.

Hmm never thought of it that way
 
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL

Also food for thought: Why could Nanticoke not be converted to gas? Would have saved building all the new gas plants and it, being an OPG asset, wouldn't be subject to the obscene subsidized rates paid to private generators.

That billion dollar lesson about how the McGuilty-Wynne liberals feel about gas though
wink.gif
 
Originally Posted By: PeterPolyol
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL

Also food for thought: Why could Nanticoke not be converted to gas? Would have saved building all the new gas plants and it, being an OPG asset, wouldn't be subject to the obscene subsidized rates paid to private generators.

That billion dollar lesson about how the McGuilty-Wynne liberals feel about gas though
wink.gif



They LOVE gas! Look at how many new gas plants we got to prop up the wind and solar installs
smirk.gif


The problem is that they are all private, though that was not a "problem" for the government, it was as planned, since they didn't want any of the money coming out of government coffers, rather they'd have the ratepayers pay for it via the Global Adjustment and generous subsidies. It only became an issue when it irked the NIMBY's and looked to cost them a seat.

Retrofitting Nanticoke to be a 4,000MW gas plant would have cost the province money, but would have saved the rate payers significantly. Just like expanding Darlington instead of the GEA would have done the same. But when you are bought off by Samsung and other "party donors" well, one doesn't concern themselves with nonsense such as what's best for the ratepayers and the environment
wink.gif
 
Originally Posted By: PeterPolyol
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL

Also food for thought: Why could Nanticoke not be converted to gas? Would have saved building all the new gas plants and it, being an OPG asset, wouldn't be subject to the obscene subsidized rates paid to private generators.

That billion dollar lesson about how the McGuilty-Wynne liberals feel about gas though
wink.gif



Funny Nanticoke came up...the Wallerawang turbines were orphan sisters to Wallerawang. Originally a GEC 500MW design, that was bought out by Parsons, the Nanticoke were the 3,600RPM version.

For anyone interested, here's one of the concept designs for the GEC 500s...the triple LP turbine and back pressure steam feed pump turbines were never adopted in practice.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B72RMQAMdx4iVFFmN2V2OWYyaWluZklPWVRmRjNRTEhxbFJr/view?usp=sharing

Of course the boilers could have been converted (relatively) cheaply to Gas...has been done all over the world.

Steam Conditions (2300psi and 1005F) plus the GEC/Parsons turbines would have made about 33-34% Nett efficiency.

$40M per turbine upgrade would have added another 2% to that.
 
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