First blackout of the wind power heavy system

GreatApe

gefnew wrote: »

hi
so what happens when hp has to have its outage period for reactor checks and fuel rods replaced pipes for the coolant system renewed
which is a long period of time.
gef

It's about 18 months online 1 month offline to refuel and do maintenance and then off you go again

The two reactors will probably aim not to be offline at the same time
But neither is a problem

UK isn't nuclear heavy but if we were we would aim to refuel during low periods like the summer and have 100% output during high periods like the winter. Hinckley will also likely aim to refuel in the summer since winter prices are higher so it's better to be online then

Actually that's an interesting observation with a CFD why bother timing your refueling?
That's one sort the government should have put in the contract. Refuel summer not winters

gefnew

Sorry but you are totally wrong in your statement
Have done work at hp and the outage lasted nearly a year with both plants shut down for safety reasons workers who where doing the repairs could only work for up to four days then could not return for over one years time until there dose readings where below levels.

GreatApe

gefnew wrote: »

Sorry but you are totally wrong in your statement

What statement is it that I am wrong on?

That nuclear reactors typically run for 18 months then down for about a month?
This is easy to prove look at the average USA capacity factor it's 92.5% for their nuclear fleet and half the reactors achieve even better than that (the largest in the world) that means for 92.5% of hours in a given year they are up and running. 7.5% of the year they are down mostly to be refueled

So I'm not wrong on that

Have done work at hp and the outage lasted nearly a year with both plants shut down for safety reasons workers who where doing the repairs could only work for up to four days then could not return for over one years time until there dose readings where below levels.

Those are AGRs which while having served the UK well are very different from LWRs which have proven to be more successful and are the most numerous and are the ones used for new builds the world over

Out of interest what were you doing?

Martyn1981

mmmmikey wrote: »

Undoubtedly true. A good example of a nuclear power station tripping would be Chernobyl, and that was a long time ago, so no big deal then.....

Not as relevant to the UK, but we also see lots of shutdowns in the US when extreme weather is expected. Floridian nuclear in the path of last years hurricane was shutdown in preparation, and extreme cold can impact the supply of cooling water.

A while back Trump tried to rig the market in favour of coal and nuclear in order to prop them up against the falling costs of RE. He proposed a subsidy that was only available to powerstations with 90+days of on-site fuel storage, as they are essential during extreme cold/weather conditions. Unfortunately, not only can nuclear suffer from extreme cold, but the US had had difficulty during ice storms when the coal piles had frozen solid and could not be 'scooped' up.

A year or so back we had the winter situation where countries, including the UK and Germany, where burning masses of coal to export leccy to France when around 1/3rd of their reactors were shutdown due to concerns over the growing number of cracks found.

But, in fairness, I agree that nuclear is extremely reliable, it's just important to note that it's not 100% reliable, and that has to be factored in, and thereby results in generation duplication for it too.

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Not as relevant to the UK, but we also see lots of shutdowns in the US when extreme weather is expected. Floridian nuclear in the path of last years hurricane was shutdown in preparation, and extreme cold can impact the supply of cooling water.

A while back Trump tried to rig the market in favour of coal and nuclear in order to prop them up against the falling costs of RE. He proposed a subsidy that was only available to powerstations with 90+days of on-site fuel storage, as they are essential during extreme cold/weather conditions. Unfortunately, not only can nuclear suffer from extreme cold, but the US had had difficulty during ice storms when the coal piles had frozen solid and could not be 'scooped' up.

A year or so back we had the winter situation where countries, including the UK and Germany, where burning masses of coal to export leccy to France when around 1/3rd of their reactors were shutdown due to concerns over the growing number of cracks found.

But, in fairness, I agree that nuclear is extremely reliable, it's just important to note that it's not 100% reliable, and that has to be factored in, and thereby results in generation duplication for it too.

Far too much negative propaganda

Nukes operate very reliably the biggest fleet is in the USA and last year they achieved average of 92.6% capacity factor. Half obviously did even better

It takes about 35 days for a refueling outage every 18 months. Which accounts for about 6.4% of downtime leaving about 1% of downtime due to trips and failures etc. Or to put it another way they are about 99% reliable online when you expect them to be and you can time the refueling to be when demand is lower

joefizz

"Nuclear power stations do trip (not often"


True. Usually just once....

joefizz

This wasn't just one issue, but as usual a combination of what are considered unrelated issues which when looking at the big picture are combined.


For example imagine if you will buying trains with design specs usually for countries where loss of power to the train network is unheard of and would be deemed either due to something really catastrophic or something only done under controlled service/ test conditions. The designer might consider that the train is either on it's side or roof or scattered in various places so rebooting is the least of their design worries. Conversely it could be done with service personnel plugged into a port 10 metres away.


Sitting stuck on an underfunded for profit no backup network blocking every other train and needing someone in a van to go out and reboot might not have been considered in the design.


All hypothetical of course and of course people will say that couldn't possible happen but I was once called from the US at just after 3am when a phone network went down.
What's the error message? Says I.
This loop should not occur. (along with the initials of the developer).
To be fair to the developer the conditions should not have occurred but people don't always follow procedure and things don't always happen in a particular order or cables are plugged into blank ports to clear error messages and save money...

edgex

GreatApe wrote: »

Huge UK power cut caused by generator 'failure' at Hornsea wind farm

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/uk-power-cut-hornsea-wind-3196187.amp

Have you actually read the entire article?
Did you understand it?

Martyn1981

mmmmikey wrote: »

Something we agree on I think the potential to use immersion heaters to balance supply and demand is huge, both to reduce demand when the grid is stressed but also as a "dump load" to usefully soak up spare wind power on windy days and solar when the sun shines.

Further to you post (again), here's an article today talking about Asda as an emergency power source, in that they can turn off their freezers when power is needed:

Asda signs up its fridges to keep the UK warm this winter

Britain’s third-largest supermarket chain has signed up 300 stores and 18 distribution depots to schemes which can earn the grocery giant extra revenue while helping to balance the electricity grid.

Under the long-term deal with National Grid the supermarket’s nationwide networks of freezer aisles and storage fridges will make up a 13 megawatt power source – enough energy to power about 8,500 homes.

As an aside, it's worth noting just how much of the UK's leccy the supermarkets waste.

In the UK, they account for approx 5% of all leccy consumption, and 20% of that is wasted due to open freezers and coolers, so a net loss/waste of 1% of the whole national consumption.

The theory goes that putting lids or doors over the units acts as a psychological barrier and will reduce sales, so will impact the company (v's competitors). However in France, with near identical figures (5% of national consumption), they passed a law requiring doors, and I think I recall the Co-op taking unilateral action on the issue(?)

EricMears

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Further to you post (again), here's an article today talking about Asda as an emergency power source, in that they can turn off their freezers when power is needed:

It's a fair while since I retired, but once upon a time I used to work at a very large cement works. Our power was bought on a tariff that had different prices for different times of the day and we also undertook to 'load shed' if National Grid engineers requested it (I'm sure there would have been some financial incentive for joining that scheme but afraid I've no idea about figures). Potentially we could very easily switch off 5MW and with a bit of effort could drop by up to 20MW (except of course that it would be very unusual to receive such a request other than at a time when the variable tariff meant that many of the heaviest using bits of plant were already off).