Solar Farm Grid boost at night! How do they do that?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 พ.ค. 2024
- As national grids around the world adopt and adapt to an increasingly higher proportion of renewable energy in their systems, challenges and opportunities are presenting themselves in almost equal measure. Balancing grid voltage using solar farms during the night time, when there is no sunlight, is unlikely to have been one the benefits that many people might have predicted, but that is exactly what a new trial in the South of England achieved recently. This week we take a look at how this seemingly impossible feat was achieved.
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BP Lightsource Research links
Technical paper:
files.sma.de/dl/18858/Q-at-Ni...
Trial program under OFGEM TDI2.0 project (started end 2016) www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications...
Lead by UKPN under program Power potential www.nationalgrideso.com/innov...
Other Research Information
www.theguardian.com/environme...
www.lightsourcebp.com/uk/
www.nationalgrideso.com/innov...
www.theguardian.com/business/...
electricityinfo.org/news/balan...
eelpower.co.uk/challenges-for...
www.nationalgrideso.com/docum...
reneweconomy.com.au/solar-far...
www.bp.com/en_gb/united-kingd...
www.lightsourcebp.com/uk/
business.directenergy.com/blo...
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When it comes to actually storing energy for usage at night, CSP (concentrated solar power) plants using molten salt is very interesting. They heat up giant tanks full of molten salt at several hundred °C; at night they can use this heat to power their turbines.
The energy density of molten salt is amazing. He also recently talked to some people in Scandinavia about a really simple hot sand storage concept for season-shifting power from the summer to the winter!
(Although I might be thinking of a fellow traveler here, there are a couple of good TH-camrs who unfortunately get jumbled together in my silly fat old man mind! 8-P)
Especially for windfarms at sea, they can be located where the power lines come ashore.
Power factor correction. By aligning amperage with voltage, they can turn VA into true wattage. It's much like placing a capacitor in parallel with an inductive load, to reduce the overall current drawn by a motor or a transformer. It's current that heats up transformers and power lines. The clever part of this scheme, is that an inverter can act like a continuously variable capacitor, compensating for changes in reactance in an instant. All in all, it allows the necessary wattage to be used, with the minimum current possible. there is a BIG difference, between watts and VA.
AC/DC Rocks ~:) thanks for your stupendous contributions.
The links you put in the description were helpful. It's nice to hear about solutions.
ThankU for sharing and posting.
You are the first green proponent youtuber that has actually talked about VA reactive problems with respect to grid unity. Using intelligent inverters as a static VAR compensation is an ideal justification of distributed generation within the grid that actually helps.
WOW. What a fantastic intelligent channel. Have just doubled my contributions, thank-you. We need this type of forward thinking down here in Australia down under, especially at a federal level.
Brilliant video as always.
Nice video- voltage regulation using established inverters at solar sites when the solar farm is not using them at nightl ----- I think the title of this video is very misleading
Hi Cliff. Thanks for your feedback. I understand your point about the title. The system does result in more available power overall though, so there is a net gain there.
@@JustHaveaThink Its not from solar though is it,?
A ridiculous title makes me listen to this s**t for 10 minutes and I still dont know where the energy comes from. I have to first listen to all the activities form BP and then in 3 seconds we hear that it nas nothing to do with the title. Is that how they want to make TH-cam money? Forget it, I blocked this channel from the suggestions.
@@cliffbartle3772 it's sort of technically true, since the farm itself is providing it with its equipment, but no the panels are not doing so. It's just the other equipment on the farm increasing the efficiency of other grid sources, to get more real power out of the net input power. "Solar farm boost" is technically correct in this instance but indeed you could install the same inverters without a solar farm for the same purpose, also using the inverters inside grid scale battery storage, and so forth.
I don't understand how this makes more energy at night. Am I missing something?
Extra excellent video this week. I am well up on the fundamentals, but this video was about the new emerging state of play. Well done Dave. I really enjoyed that and learned a lot. This one gets an extra effort in sharing, because it directly touches individual households.
Cheers Andy. Judging by some of the comments, this week's video was a bit of a head scratcher for some folks, and I can understand why it can seem counter-intuitive. Other commenters have provided some extra very useful detail around the capacitance of solar inverters etc. so I think they have answered most people's queries. As always, I am extremely grateful for your support and feedback. Have a great week. All the best. Dave
Even watching it twice I don't really understand what the solar plants are doing at night. But making it cheaper to keep the grid at operating levels with existing hardware that is not being used still sounds great.
Hi Yora.. I've now added BP's technical paper to the description so you can have a read through
Everything within this video was new information. Outstanding!
Unfortunately it was all wrong.
What those inverters will do is with their capacitance do power factor correction on the very inductive grid making it use less energy for the same amount of real energy delivered. But that capacitance is super tiny so doesn't make a shit of a difference.
BP has been involved in Solar and batteries since at least 1990, so their interest in renewable power goes back a long way.
Long story short, it's grid scale active power factor correction using just the inverters.
Glad somebody knows what the score is. This is clever but not rocket science. Boosted BPs share price no doubt :)
just watched this episode again; so so good ....... very well done JHAT 👍👍👍👍
I'm going to have to watch this again as I'm not getting it.
Hi Logik. I've now added BP's technical paper to the description so you can have a read through
same. I hope I can get a quick answer through those white papers
Nonsense, that’s why..
Notice the careful wording, grid support, not capacity. The actual energy still needs to come from somewhere and on a still night.... you need smart meters so you can selectively turn off “non essential “ users.
We’re in trouble.
@@JustHaveaThink Thanks for the link. I bookmarked it for later reading. For now, though, count me as a skeptic. From your description, it sounds as if you're talking about storing energy in solar panels. I don't see how that would work, apart from backing every solar cell with a supercapacitor and some conditioning electronics. And actually, I can see how something like that could make sense, but I have a feeling that is not what is being described here.
The description in the video is somewhat muddled. The description in the linked PDF is clear, though somewhat light on details about what the inverter is actually doing. I'm guessing that it uses existing internal capacitors for absorbing and releasing power at the right moments.
I always learn so much from you. Thanks for all you do.
I have been charging my EV and running my dishwasher between 11 PM and 7 AM for a while. I pay less than $0.01 kWh !!
You jammy sod :D
mafarmerga
I do too, in the U.K. we can buy cheap energy from share.octopus.energy/funny-rose-57 They supply our energy at just 4.8 pence per kWh between 00.30 & 04.30. We charge our car, Powerwall & run the dishwasher during those hours then use the Powerwall during the day. Summertime and the solar panels do all our power needs.
Hi Mafarmerga. I'm very pleased you enjoyed it. Thanks for your feedback, as always. Much appreciated. Great to hear you're getting the benefit of cheap supply!
Wow, that's an amazing deal! Where do you live?
IncognitoTorpedo
Hi yes we are very happy with it. We live in East Sussex England, if you click the link you can read all about it. The U.K. has some of the cheapest power in Europe and with our off shore wind farms now producing energy cheaper than any other method of production we are reaping the benefits. Our peak rate is 15 pence per kWh between 04-30 & 00.30 but I never buy power then because of the Powerwall.
What’s more octopus energy have other deals were by they buy surplus energy from you, if you have solar panels and then if you have a battery storage system they will sometimes pay you to take surplus energy from the grid to smooth things out. That scheme is based on a half hourly measurement of power, via smart meters that are fitted in the houses, so you can even earn money by helping the grid. I’ve opted for Octopus Go Tariff because I already get paid 5p per kilowatt on every kilowatt we generate, regardless of it we use or export it! And another 4p per kilowatt on 50% of what we generate base on the assumption that we export 50% that’s paid even if we use all ourselves.. unfortunately the government has closed that insensitive scheme which is why Octopus energy have started their schemes.
fantastic!!!
I'm sorry to say, that for the first time, I know less about the subject after seeing your video. Just exactly how does an inverter do the magic thing you talk about?
it could be the lefty thing... conspiracy theory == narrative
check out what reactive power is.
Add some large battery banks and you have win win. South Australia's Tesla battery has proven to be hugely successful doing grid stability.
Kelvin Ham Yeah, about that battery.......I crunched the numbers ( using real statistics not biased info) such as average Australian power usage per capita, South Australia’s population (1.7 million) and battery capacity (150 megawatt hours) and here are the FACTS. In order to supply battery power (for 1 average day, ) South Australia’s 1.7 million population would require 17.5 Tesla battery banks. That’s for one day. If you had a few days of overcast, low wind conditions ( or say for instance no wind bushfire smoke haze a bit like we have had a whole lot of lately and a visual check of my inverter showed woeful output from my rooftop panels) and you are gonna deplete those batteries real quick. Now I’m trying to imagine a population of 1.7 million people paying for enough batteries to supply power for one day and it gets expensive, given their life span, recycling costs etc.
So does reliable electricity become a luxury for the rich while the rest get used to black and brown outs? To back up this they need gas turbine generators which spew out carbon (and are also expensive)
Just a little reality check here.
@@rachels209 no, thats not how this works. You are looking at batteries and their implementation the same way as Morrison did. That is not the intended use of Batteries, firstly their inverter is not capable of suppling stand alone power to the grid. Batteries are brilliant at supplying large current for a very short time. Grid stability is a complicated subject, load matching involves a complex power control systems. When a large load is introduced to the power grid, somewhere generating capacity has to ramp up to meet that demand. In the past, coal power stations had to run as if peak load was online, even though it wasn't, not possible to ramp these stations up. Add a battery and you can then run your station at the mean average expected load with the battery and inverters acting as peak load generation or, when demand drops off, a power sink. In this case, the sink current can be used to charge the batteries. This results in significant reduction in co2 emissions due to power stations being able to run for the average load through the day. Add Renewables and further call on fossil fuel plants are reduced. One of the significant problems is not renewables dropping off line all at once, these sources of power can be in diverse locations with a mix of hydro, solar and wind. History show that thermal steam (coal) stations can drop off suddenly due to turbine faults, extreme heat, or fuel feed interruption. When these stations do go offline, the battery picks up the load almost instantly, this gives breathing space to allow ramp up of other generating sources.
@@kelvinham8576 Spot on Kelvin. I have relies in S.A. and they are over the moon with the stability these batteries have provided. Funny hey, folks who have not seen them work can stand back and tell the folks who actually have it, it doesn't work ? L.O.L.
Excellent stuff. Very competently done and professionally presented. Beats much of what one has to endure from mainstream TV. Liked and subscribed.
Thanks Bruno. Much appreciated 😊
Dave these are all technologies currently utilized in existing grids and directly at large users. Keep in mind capacitors are not efficient deep storage but rather reactive so I’m a little confused and as I feel reasonably competent in electrical engineering I’m here to say I know all. My big takeaway from this episode was the participation of large energy providers in renewables which is sorely needed. It is unreasonable to think our energy will be produced at point of use. While that sounds romantic it just isn’t realistic until we have Mr. Fusion.
"until we have Mr. Fusion" Superconductors ! Magnets that require no power at all because they are powered by Suspicious Ben's Electrified Universe or by my own British Steam Universe.
Hi Eric. Thanks for your feedback. Always appreciated. There have been lots of requests for more technical detail so I've added BP's technical paper to the description. All the best. Dave
Wait do you need these smart inverters to be connected to solar panels, or can you deploy them in the grid as they are?
Very interesting system. Helping in stopping grid crashes is needed to run a modern grid.
I live in Australia and my state has a failing grid system. I'm going off grid to get away from the problem.
Andrew, IF you live in Australia, and wish to become self sufficient in power, you could look at W.A.'s Synergy power company. Which recently after bush fires a couple of years back, took out the grid to Esperance, found the cost of rebuilding said grid was far too expensive and again vulnerable to more fires in future. Instead they decide to install mini solar instalations in the towns/farms that previously were on the grid, these instalations were coupled up to batteries of sufficient capacity to provide the required power, the whole system is stand alone and requires only minimal maintenance a few times a year. The ABC has a good segment on it that they recently ran.
@@itchyvet I have 9.6Kw of solar ready to install. 2 5Kw inverters. 700Ah @48vdc of lithium batteries usable, batrium battery management system and all sundry components. Oh I'm an electrician as well
3:02 2 GW. That's a good start.
Yesterday, on a windy day, Danish wind turbines produced little over 5 GW of electricity, all day long.
Around 500 MW more than our total, national consumption.
John Johansen nuclear still better
@@andreaswickman1508 Ummm... not any more, it isn't. UK Hinkley Point, initially slated at £9bn twelve years ago, recently announced it needed another £2bn - taking cost to date, to £22bn. And it hasn't even generated a Higgs Boson's worth of wattage yet. If this £22bn had been invested in only wind and solar, the UK would probably be free of ALL carbon and nuclear.
Nuclear had its day, but we don't need it anymore.
@@andreaswickman1508 Nuclear is still better for the people constructing the nuclear power plants. All of them are relatives of the politicians. They are rich-Rich-RICH! And even if it ever gets constructed it will never pay for itself. The UK would make more money by tearing it down immediately and replacing it with solar and wind. But that may not be as good for the relatives of those politicians.
@@brunosmith6925 Nuclear, coal, wind, and solar PV are all in the cheap electron business, and wind and PV are cheaper.
@@tradcon3096 GW is an amount of power, GWHr is an amount of energy. Maybe that's where the confusion lies?
That's new information for me. I would enjoy a more in-depth analysis later, if others are keen for this kind of stuff.
Thank you for the great content.
Cheers!
Hi Alexandra.. I've now added BP's technical paper to the description so you can have a read through, and we may well revisit with a more technical explanation later in the year.
Hi Alexandra.. I've now added BP's technical paper to the description so you can have a read through, and we may well revisit with a more technical explanation later in the year.
Does it bother you just how full of shit this Vidio is, Kiss Gretta's ring all will be well as your Country goes broke!
Here in California some EA chargers have been showing up at Shell stations. Not the densest or most ideal setups but in at least the ones I've seen the location has been pretty good.
Solar farm inverters help stabilize the grid at night...cool. Another great way to use excess renewably powered electricity is to build thermal mass electric floor heating. After high insulation I built my 80 sqft tiled floor for $1,000. It provides the best heat I have ever experienced: silent, gentle, even heat that is warm on the toes. Excellent channel!
another good video, solar into thermal generators with mirrored sunlight will definitely change things soon
Good lord, not only do I not understand one word of what he is saying, it also turns into an eleven minute soup of words in my mind.
Now that I didn't know. Nice vid.
Great video again guys, Going to have to wach it a few times to take it all in. Eddie From Scotland
Lookup "Power factor Correction" to get the right Idea of what they are trying to do...
The trolls have really started to brigade this channel. That means they see you as a legitimate threat. Good job Dave!
Cheers Geovanni. I take it as a compliment :-)
Ive had it with trolls, I report each and every one as harassment.
I hate those trolls they lie with no shame!!
@@franklinrussell4750 Aw, it's just as true to say termites and volcanoes cause more CO2 than humans as it is to say 98% of climate scientists say global warming is man-made.
Don't worry :) They are known with out them knowing.
This tech sounds good. Good video.
This is about correcting the power factor. Thing is, utilities charged large consumers more for low power factor loads hence large consumers invested in co-generation to balance the power factor so this is something the consumer paid for but now by investing in solar, the utilities have undertaken some of the capital costs they used to pass on to the consumer. No actual power is being added, just a balancing of inductive and capacitive loads.
Now, if you want solar panels to produce power at night, this could be done by using silicon 32 which radioactively decays into nitrogen via beta emissions thereby turning the solar panel into a betavoltaic battery even when no light is present. I'm not too certain where they would get the Silicon 32 though, maybe by neutron bombardment in a nuclear reactor...
Solar-nuclear, the Green quandary. Rub the panels with a lump of coal first to improve them ?
You are exactly correct. The only information I would add is this:
Power factor is based on the fact that some loads are resistive (i.e. electric heaters) and many loads are, most typically, inductive (i.e. electric motors). When a voltage is applied to a resistive load, the current (amps) exactly follows (in timing) the applied voltage (volts) which is a power factor of 1. For inductive loads, the current lags behind (in time) the applied voltage. Real power is the instantaneous product of voltage and current. Apparent power is the product of RMS ("root-mean-square" = the average of the AC sine wave) current and voltage. BOTH real and apparent power have to be supplied to power systems for the system loads which are most often inductive. Typically, power companies "correct" poor system power factor with capacitors or inductors which can be switched in or out as needed. The closer to a power factor of 1, the closer to only needing to supply the real power. I'm not familiar with the way inverters can supply apparent (reactive) power to a power system, but if it's true it could save the infrastructure costs of the power factor correcting equipment.
Need a more in-depth explanation of how this works.
I didn't understand the practical process either but I will take Dave's word for it that it is a viable working technology !
@@mikeharrington5593 don't!
Dave did say that he would go into things in more detail in a later video.
@@mikeharrington5593 I didn't understand it either, the guy talks too fast and the technical stuff sounds like another language what i do know is that it's all a great con to make the public pay over the odds for their power. People used to mock the renewables for not working in cloudy/windless weather so the boffins claimed they work but poorly now they sat they can have a purpose at night. The big benefit is for landowners who get paid well to let the generators on their land and still get to use the area to graze livestock :=)
The thing with AC power is that both the voltage and current oscillate. Depending on your location, this could be 50 Hz or 60 Hz. With purely active power draw from the grid, the voltage and current oscillate in synch. However, when you add reactive power into the mix, the voltage and current maintain the frequency but are now oscillating out of synch. Because the voltage and current switch polarity at different intervals, there will be a fraction of the oscillation period when energy is sent back to the source occurring every cycle. This is unavoidable when there are loads that are not fully resistive but also have characteristics that make loads temporarily store and release energy -- whether it's energy stored in the form of magnetic fields or electric fields. And no, this energy storage cannot be used to store solar energy during the day for use at night.
Wonderful news!!!
For everyone not getting it, basically you are using the inverters was on the solar network as a somewhat of a battery using some Electrical engineering trickery. Basically holding the waveform out of phase for a period of time, evening out peaks and valleys of production
They are using the inverters for power conditioning not generation of power at night.
This is risky unless the inverters are designed to do this from the get go as they normally lack the buffer capacity and spike protection and resonance protection . However a suitable sized solar farm will have power conditioners protecting the inverters adding a couple of banks of supercapacitors would enable them to do just that without bursting into flames from being over taxed.
Exciting 🙌
In industry jargon, this would be an example of what is called a Network Ancillary Service, or Network Support & Control Ancillary Services . It is not solar panels that provide it , but rather, their DC/AC plant, otherwise idle at night.
In Electronics and Electricity production it is referred to as ELI the Ice-man In an inductive load the Voltage leads the Current to some degree depending on the inductive reactance. Like motors starting and stopping. The ICE in iceman stands for the Current leading the voltage due to a capacitive load which is an electric power grid is also tied to motors starting and stopping. Dishwasher, Washing machine, Clothes dryer, Refrigerator Freezer, HVAC system (Heat and Air Conditioner,) small appliances like blenders. Anything that has a motor in it.
Please focus on the concept of reactive power and how solar energy systems play a role in providing that in which it helps balance the grid?
It is an interesting video, please elaborate more though.
Subbed ;)
a lot of people seem to be missing the point here...no the solar panels are not directly doing anything in this situation but the fact that we have such large scale farms means we also have large scale inverters, which are the perfect tools for balancing an ac voltage. that ultimately means the infrastructure is already built saving lots of time and money while also making the grid much more efficient (you dont need to add more energy to increase the voltage through an inverter if the load is low or vis versa)
Being outside of the UK it was interesting to see what Shell and BP are up to. I don't understand the theory of what you explained. I get the idea that a software upgrade in the solar farm invertors somehow smooths out the power, but you don't get anything for free (i.e. no extra power), so I'll check out your links to read up a bit more on it. I also don't understand why people would be paid to use electricity, unless for some reason not making use of excess wind power could cause damage in some way. Thanks for the introduction to this topic, and providing the links to follow up on.
A quick follow up and it does seem that the invertors are acting a bit like a MPPT solar charger, where voltage is adjusted by using more or less current. I did read "Lightsource BP worked with Power Electronics to re-calibrate the inverters to take power from the grid and reflect it back to the grid in better condition." (www.bp.com/en_gb/united-kingdom/home/news/press-releases/lightsource-bp-pioneers-uks-first-night-time-solar-service.html) but "better condition" sounds a bit vague and I am not entirely sure it is "reflected" back either as the invertor voltage out has to be in phase with the incoming. I expect there is some scary math involved in all of this, but a couple of email addresses in the link can be contacted for more information.
It's to do with something called power factor and real and apparent power. A pure (resistive) load uses 100% real power. A load that is purely capacitive or inductive only uses apparent power (the voltage and current of the AC are out of phase with each other and no _real_ power is used), most real loads are somewhere in between (although most are designed to be of a high power factor , and I think there are rules on this too for equipment manufacturers). Different loads on the grid result in the current and voltage going out of phase which can make a much higher current needed to be passed through the network that doesn't perform any real work, but does heat cables and equipment so power gets wasted. The inverters must have been programmed to simulate the correct power factor for a load that would get the current and voltage in phase again on the grid (this is also what a power factor correction capacitor is for in some equipment, like motors and the old magnetic ballast fluorescent tube fixtures). If you look up power factor you'll get a handle on it - my explanation may not be the best (especially if you aren't familiar with real and apparent power, reactive loads and power factor).
This wikipedia page should help: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power
Hi David. It is a weird concept I must admit. I had to read through the research several times before I got anywhere close to getting my head around it. As I understand it, no new power is generated, but rather some lost power is avoided - i.e the power loss in the generators while they're being used to smooth out the voltage. So if the solar inverters can do that work instead at a time when they would other wise be doing nothing at all, because it's dark and the solar panels are 'asleep', then that allows the generators to work at better efficiencies...
The final bit of the vid about people getting paid to use electricity is really just an extension of what the grid has always done during times of unexpected reduction in consumption - they have alway had two options : 1. Pay factories to switch on machines and use the electricity that, by definition, has to go somewhere or 2. Temporarily shutdown one of their power stations, which is a nightmare for them and costs them a fortune. So it's cheaper to pay the factories. Now that we have a smart grid and people's home electrical systems can be used like millions of micro energy users all of which can now 'talk' constantly to the grid through modern software, then the end users can be paid a little bit to use that electricity instead of the factories,. And of course you can bet that the Grid will pay the domestic consumers far less than they ever had to pay the factories, and the domestic users like it because they're getting paid something they never got paid before, so it's a bit of a win-win situation. And as an added bonus of course, the more we have battery storage on the grid, the easier it is to actually store excess energy. Battery storage is like manna from heaven for grid operators - it more or less fixes their grid management difficulties. Promising times ahead for smart grid technology ! :-) Cheers. Dave
Thanks 3m Jim. I understand a little about how an inductive or capacitive load the voltage and current are out of phase. I am wondering how the phase at the load would change the phase on the grid, especially if the high voltage is stepped down with transformers. Also, would an inverter be able to sink much power in order to modify the incoming voltage & current? I will take a look at power factor to get a better grip on it, thanks for the link.
Household and now even major appliances including LED lighting increasingly have switch mode power supplies (essentially inverter technology) this enables these appliances to operate reliably over a wide range of mains voltages while providing a largely non-reactive load to the grid.
Thanks for your video. A really simple idea.this is useful for our village plans. Any chance of a video on pyrolysis reactors as our council is still sending plastic abroad.
Plastic comes from petroleum crude oil. If you pyrolysis it you are dumping more fossil carbon into the atmosphere via CO2 emissions. The best use for plastic currently is as recycled raw material for making new plastic products, or, in my opinion, bury it in a land fill, underground whence it came, locked away from getting into the atmosphere.
@@alivation thanks.that answers the question.
@@alivation Pyrolysis isn't burning. It's a way to decompose the plastic into simpler molecules which can then be put to other uses. It's promising technology, but my sense of it is that it's not something that's likely to make economic sense at the village scale. I agree with you that landfilling plastic may well be the most ecologically and economically sound approach at this time for a village.
IncognitoTorpedo yes I’m aware of what pyrolysis is. The point of doing it in a civic type installation is to produce a fuel gas which will burn cleanly and is easily to reticulate. It is typically used for heating or to produce electricity via a steam turbine. Whatever, the pyrolysis gas which is a mixture of short chain hydrocarbons and maybe CO is burnt to produce heat, water and carbon dioxide. It’s this CO2 which will get into the atmosphere unless scrubbed and contained. I suspect the financials could be made to work if the cost of acquiring the waste plastic is close to zero AND the environmental costs are rated at zero, which is irresponsible at a minimum in my opinion.
Hi Dave I am building a new house in Portugal I want to be as much off grid as possible but at the same time be economical with the funds can you suggest a set up, or somewhere i could get resources I would like solar for power but do i get a batterie back up I am on the grid I was also thinking of solar hot water but am a little lost when it comes to heating and cooling as i am interested in a heat exchanger like the Mitsubishi units look forward to hearing from you. And great job
Hi Fram. Great to hear from you and thanks for your feedback. Sounds like you've got a lovely clean slate to work with. In all honesty your best bit is to consult with a green energy installer or designer. Also worth looking at ground source heat pumps. All the best. Dave
I wish I had found your channel earlier!
When you draw power the grid voltage drops, then they feed it back at a slightly higher voltage?
Isn't that identical to pulling yourself up by your bootlaces ?
That makes sense. I second this question
Not quite. No new power is generated. Instead the loss of power from generators is being avoided by using inverters to smooth the voltage instead. So effectively it is an increase in efficiency and an increase in available real power.
Not quite. The tricky thing has to do with the electricity being AC (changing direction in the wires). Typically the voltage and current fluctuations tend to get shifted in time (out of sync) by all of the coils in the electric system(motors, transformers etc.), but the electronics in the solar park converters can be programmed to counter that effect.
@@ChrisTheLaCat
That's power factor?
@@_a.z Yes. Took me a while to get there as well. Poor power factor (current out of phase with the voltage) loads the generating plant and assets without actually doing anything. If you "realign" the current with the voltage it effectively reduces the load on the generating and distribution plant.
I'll have to re-watch this at night :P
Sounds like they're simply using the inverters from a solar farm. That's not generation, that's regulating transmission.
No one said it was "generation" just that solar farm equipment is proving very useful in stabilizing the grid at night. Just a complicated, positive side benefit to such facilities. Solar farms storing extra energy in batteries or pumping water up a hill and letting it run down at night is a totally different issue.
@@ElazarusWills You made my point for me. If the title said "stabilize the grid at night" rather than "grid boost" I wouldn't have made my comment implying misleading click-bait.
How I understand this ,guys ( BP ) will generate " clean and free " Ho-ho-ho energy at day time using solar panels and wind turbines , and at night time will dump excess energy generated by wind turbines , through grid inverters into solar panels . How ? Solar panels can generate electric power using sun , and can consume electric power at night ( this is why some solar panels have blocking diodes to stop this ) . Build wind turbines , consumer will pay more for " clean and free " energy ( I know one person who have solar panels on the roof , and him told me I thing in 2013 , what FEED IN TARIFF pay to him £0.48 per Kilowatt energy produced !!!!! I pay at moment about £0.16 per Kilowatt in 2020 !!! So ..... what we have now ...., "clean and free " energy will be generated , FEED IN TARIFF will pay for this energy ...., and then excess energy will be dumped in solar panels . FANTASTICO !!!!!! HA-HA-HA !!!!!!
Yeah, this video was very unclear perhaps intentionally on this point.
Am guessing that the "innovation" is that grid balancers and likely more specifically inverters probably convert excess electricity to heat and simply let it evacuate into the atmosphere to cool the grid and keep it operating within its thresholds... But instead of simply converting to heat the excess electricity is stored for later use. Doesn't sound that innovative, but could be a step in the right direction for a more efficient, "smart" grid.
that is awesome!!!!
Very interesting and, exciting 😃👌👌
This is such a good move to provide end customers with the possibility to get paid to balance the grid. I don't get why this is not implemented in more countries.
Great stuff, thank you.
If I understand this correctly (and I think I do) this is a power factor correction device for the grid!
The graph shown at 3:28 is one I am familiar with ...... but is not relevant to this concept! The base generation load and peak generation load is only relevant to the control engineer who calls upon power generators to supply load dependant on their location and Cost (cost being the most important)! This gives a grid supplied sufficient to its load at the cheapest cost giving everyone cheaper electricity.
If the Control Engineer wants a plant to give more power they can increase their output by increasing the energy they put into their exciter coils ...... I am talking about rotary power generation here ...... and balancing their output (which would want to slow down) by increasing their motive power source (opening the throttle a bit on say a diesel generator). If they did not do this the whole grid would keep the plant running like a motor rather than a dynamo!
That is basically how the grid is balanced! What you are talking about now is a balancing of the electricity itself. When inductance (magnetic devices) are put on an alternating supply and you look at the voltage and current on an oscilloscope you see that the more the inductance the more out of phase the two traces are. If you put a capacitance across the supply you see that the current trace will come more into line with the voltage. This is the effect you are getting with using the inverters!
There is nothing for free though!
Inverters take energy .... say 5% (this is a guess on my part, they may well be much less efficient! 20% would not surprise me) so the cost of getting a power factor of .95 (industry minimum ideal) will cost you 5 - 20% of the load! This could be cheaper than some alternatives ...... but the losses in a capacitor are negligible compared to this!
In the end it is all about economics .... is it cheaper to use exiting kit and pay up to 20% of the load or pay for installing a nationwide grid of capacitor banks that can be shunted in and out as needed?
Sorry to waffle on so long but without context a pithy comment becomes meaningless ;0)
That's not what I expected, but I guess it's hard to see the improvements if someone doesn't really know the problem with reactive power. But I think it's great news nonetheless especially considering that the cost of that technology is really low when you already have a solar power plant.
That sounded like he was reading from something a marketing team spun. The story just had to say "We used the solar farm's batteries to store power that came in from non-solar sources". When they use that kind of language it makes me suspect we'll be hearing statments about the amount of power they "took from a solar plant" rather than "generated by the solar plant" to give the impression the solar plants are making more energy than they are. Products that are working the way they're supposed to don't need defensive marketing strategies.
Interesting comment about the scale of the change required in 30 years. I liked the comment made in a BBC article is regarding effecting the changes in just 5 years.
As in, can it be done in the 5 year Extinction Rebellion timetable?
And the point was, if we really though of this as an actual Emergency, and so we put wartime levels of effort in, could we do it?
I believe we certainly could. It's not even like the last war where we had to invent technology like the digital computer to win it - everything we need actually exists!
Hi, Great channel. I have really enjoyed the videos I've seen. This video is a bit confusing to some, I THINK you are mixing up reactive power and reactive power dispatch. Reactive power dispatch seems to be the intuitive solution to changing loads/usage, i.e. to ramp up voltage in compensation to increased load. Reactive power refers to an effect caused by capacitive or inductive loads and relates to things like big motors (inductive) and small modern power supplies like phone chargers(capacitive) drawing current in a dirty inefficient manner.
So the grid suffers from reactive power when we hook up load that draws 1000w with the 50hz current waveform being out of time with the 50hz voltage waveform. Power is voltage times current if the waves are out of time you use lots of current without making use of the higher voltage at the peak of the waves. That means the thin electrical lines carry lots of current and produce waste heat for the same 1000w in the home. Reactive power dispatch is to do with changing loads.
Just a hobbyist so don't take any of this as gospel
Keep up the good work.
Don't know if I really got it. For my understanding this means just that solar power plants are used to compensate reactive power. But If the grid short of a few gigawatts, this will not contribute any additional power, does it?
Dave - this is a very good attempt to explain grid voltage support and control through reactive power. Technically how you explain things is correct - I am not sure however if some of your analogies actually helped. Reading through the comments it is apparent that many people struggled to understand what you said and many profess to be electrical engineers. I think that this is a topic way more technical and obscure compared to the other topics you cover.
I work in the renewable energy industry and this is within my scope of expertise. I work with many electrical engineers and I can contest that the vast majority of qualified electrical engineers do not understand this topic and struggle to follow the underlying physics and mathematics that are used describe the system control.
You avoided explaining symmetrical sequence components and Fortescue math - surely if you could of just explained this to your audience they would of all been able to fully understand what you were explaining.
could have*
Yes this is a very smart way of using a investment that is already made. This brings the cost down for the end consumer and makes the net even more robots. Bigger inverters together with battery banks (BEVs )is the future will balance the grid.
Whats the kwh price on night time? Daytime is usually 0.02
So they are talking about using the inverters at solar farms as "spinning reserve". This is not sending power on to the grid like pumped hydro does. It's just a stabilizer. both battery farms and pumped hydro can do the same thing.
They could be better at than physical spinning reserves and battery farms considering each inverter is capable of putting out much more power (reactively) than the house usually consumes. Whereas a big battery farm is designed to put out power at the max rate the batteries can economically handle, which isnt as much headroom as the inverters are built with. Hydro can do frequency regulation but only by brute force, power electronics should be more responsive and efficient.
Yes but these are existing and not utilised at that time. This is relatively cheap by making better use of existing resources and can be quickly got running.
I think this is supposed to be in concert with them..
Just like gravitricity, gravitation electricity, with weight being lifted through night current or other "peak lots". And when the current is scarce, the kinetic drop of the weight gets formed into other types of energy. Keep systems open for optimized ideas
Never ever trust an oil company, that's my advise. They are pure evil and the people behind those oil companies have no morals at all. A much better solution would be to use the ultra capacitors from a company called Skeleton Ultra capacitors. Or to convert excess energy into hydrogen or some other clever solution to store energy. A Scottish island is already using the product from Skeleton ultra capacitors for their completely self sufficient grid. th-cam.com/video/3RUY0BUgFjs/w-d-xo.html And this is a video from the fully charged channel who went to visit the company, and they spoke with the owner from the company. th-cam.com/video/KQ2Eo6wl5r0/w-d-xo.html Just don't give the oil companies access to your inverters, because they can't be trusted. The people behind those oil companies are like drug dealers, they want you to stay addicted to their grid, and they want to have total control over your energy supply. It makes no sense at all to use inverters to deal with energy spikes in the grid. It only means that they are going to use the inverters as some sort of resistor to convert excess energy into heat. And that is just a pure waste of energy.
Remember the laws about preservation of energy. You can't make energy magically disappear. Since inverters and solar panels do not store energy the inverters can only deal with spikes in the grid by wasting energy and by turning the excess energy into heat. So basically they will use the transistors inside your inverter as a resistor in order to convert excess energy into heat. I know one thing, giving the oil company access to your solar panel inverter would be the same thing as giving a thief access to your vault or wallet. You have been warned!!!
Typically large industrial power users get charged extra for poor power factors (reactive loads). Inductive power-factors can be offset by attaching capacitance loads to the line. Connecting solar inverters to the grid at night for their capacitance, isn't producing any real (average) power. It is simply saving the electrical utility money (less line losses) by improving the power factor.
so storing energy in an extra water heater ore accumulator tank using smart house technology and weather forecast ?
That's not what the video is talking about, although it is a way of saving energy.
Now that is very nice of Shell, but they still evade paying taxes over here in the Netherlands.
Btw, the industry actually pays for reactive power, only households don't.
The future of energy management might be in optimizations and automation. Once we modernize our smart grids with superconductivity we might augment our renewables to meet our entire energy needs.
Like with food and water, production might not even be the biggest problem. Just getting the most of it to the consumers without loosing most of it on the way.
Allen Loser here is an answer: phys.org/news/2019-07-explore-mysteries-magic-angle-superconductors.html
Variable price of power will help 😀
Inverters use high power capacitators both to equalize the incomming DC supply and for actually generating AC Power. And they have microcontroller controlled high-power amplifier circuits that can basically build up the wave nanosecond after nanosecond. So you can use that at night to catch shorttermed peaks and disturbances or realign the waves of AC. But capacitors operate in milliseconds or seconds, this is not about long term power storage but about powerweb efficiency.
However if you loop the DC from solar panels through a battery array, you can equalize solar power output over several hours and store overproduction from other plants. I think, existing solar powerplants are likely places to build future electrical storage plants. Also shafts of wind turbines are likely to house some batteries.
BTW efficiency of power distribution is a thing right now. For most of europe, you have 3 phase rotating voltage at symmetrical 120degrees phaseshift between the lines. Electric field waves travel along the lines at the speed of light, 300.000km/s or 6000km on every cycle, so if you build a closed loop of 3000km, the 50Hz sine wave will destructively interfere on itself. For smaller closed loops, the effect is less pronounced but measurable. So overall efficiency is largely improved by cutting through the net at appropriate places. With large numbers of small providers and very variable outputs and characteristics of small plants, phase coherence has become more of a concern over the last years. Large generators are first ramped up to 3000 turns per minute or 50Hz as electric motors, so they self-align with the net and stabilize it by inertia of rotating masses.
Musicians also know the problem. Speed of sound is roughly 300m/s, so if the choir sits 30m away from the orchestra, it is 1/10 of a second late to hear the orchestra and sing along. If you sit at the opposite direction as a spectator, you will hear the choir and orchestra out of sync.
Solar and wind power only can save the planet, Pl. keep up the good work.I support initiatives.
Not a bad 'wind' fall.
It's quite easy. All you need is for thousands of people to shine a hand torch on the panels at night or perhaps candles in jam jars might do.
, The company I worked with 20 odd years ago were doing this to power remote radio and television transmitter relay stations up mountains, in desserts and remote unpopulated places. Just suprised it hasn't been done earlier than now.
I used my uv light on some solar panels, and noticed that they mainly convert uv and ir to voltage, not to much of the visible spectrum.
thats because uv and ir are the most energetic and easy to convert.
@@prydzen uv is high energy, ir is low energy on the opposite side of the visible spectrum.
Capacitors are used to support transmission line voltage
historically these have been fixed capacitors or synchronous condensers (variable)
HVDC converters can be made to simulate traditional synchronous condensers.
the solar panels have nothing to do in this process
I have been doing this for a while now with my solar system. On sunny days I make much more then I need so I run my heaters and do as much as I can with the extra power and use less when it isnt as nice of a day. Welcome to check my channel.
You big show off. I turn the heat up on nuclear off peak so's I sweat like a pig. I collect all that hot sweat in a pickle jar and use it for heating during tea time peak. There was one debacle about the missus including pickles for tea time sandwiches so I might have to switch to your method.
@@grindupBaker you should make a video on that. Where are you from?
Frank Z I live in the US on fossil fuel and nuclear energy. It is cheap and reliable, and I do not have to scurry around trying to use power on sunny days, or go without power for certain appliances on cloudy days. I hit the switch and whatever it is turns on. I flip it off, and it stops. What you describe sounds like a huge pain in the rear.
Where did you get that graph around 5 1/2 minutes in?
You're missin the big label under the graph boyo, 5:38
@@adymode I'll look again, it's really hard to pause and look at this on my phone because it overlays a dark color so you can't hardly read anything.
@@aaronbono4688 No worries, its there if you feel like looking into it later. "National Grid Future Energy Scenarios: 2019" ( Bing/Duck/Google to get url of the pdfs)
Most residential solar panels have a diode that prevents reverse current...
The video brought me on a other way of energy storage: in our former bulb lamps, extremely hot filaments of tungsten emitted light and so we need to find a material that preserves heat at very high temperature, then use it to make a special bulb lamp emit red light (red light = lower temperature, so still possible to store ) and then shine that light on red light sensitive solar panels. The efficiency could be.... ok, very, very low ;-)
Wait so the converters were used at night to help balance the grid but did the energy still come from traditional sources?
Wind turbines (or at least some of them) also do this trick. Especially offshore turbines often do not have a gearbox, because maintenance is too difficult. But how do you then modify the blade speed to the grid frequency? They use electric components called "converters" for that. Basically they are a combination of rectifier (AC to DC) followed by inverter (DC to grid-AC). So these windturbines can (and do) the same trick of stabilising the grid, even when there is no wind.
there is another form of solar energy aside from the photovoltaic, it's the heat or thermal energy. all of this can become a hybrid when combined with burning methane to produce steam and generate far more electricity than solar alone can produce. you have the photovoltaic going into the grid in the daylight hours and the thermal is used to heat molten salt which heats the steam and the methane is used at night or cloudy days. An added benefit is that burning methane from sewage treatment and landfills actually reduces the the carbon dioxide that's already in the atmosphere not to mention that left unburned the methane really adds to global warming. So now you have a multi purpose/multi fuel hybrid power plant that produces cheap energy we need and reduces co 2 in the atmosphere. It's a win win for everybody. More energy companies should think out of the box.
Aside from confusing the concepts of grid load balancing versus reactive/real power, I think a main point is that renewables are intermittent. Demand is not. Wind and Solar make no attempt to align with demand either and cannot. Power demand rises in winter when it's coldest and darkest. In fact it's usually coldest in high pressure, clear nights when it's calm. If we took all the money given to fossil fuels and immediately invested it into renewables, there is current no viable technological solution that will meet grid demand consistently. For that to happen other technologies need to be developed. This means it is very unlikely to occur in the time frames which scientists are saying we need to act. The only solution, given enough money that can do this with today's tech is nuclear. That might be an uncomfortable truth, but it's a hard fact. Renewables have to be backed up with storage which simply does not exist on the scale we need it and if and when it does the amount of renewables to provide demand and charge storage means we need somewhere in the order of 10 times the daily load of renewable generation capability due to their intermittency, along with 10-20 days of storage, 350-700GWh of storage which will cost trillions.
At this moment (2022), there are 440 reactors operating in 39 countries, with 55 more under construction - and probably more than 55 at risk of closure in the next decade due to age and obsolescence, or inability to compete with less expensive renewables and modern natural gas plants. So scaling from the current 10% of our energy to the kind of numbers needed to totally replace fossil fuels would be every bit as much of an effort for nuclear as it would be for renewables and storage. That’s without considering the fact that there are over 150 countries with no nuclear power at all, most of whom currently lack the industrial and social base required to even operate a nuclear plant, much less build one.
Despite your claims, building energy storage is a straightforward exercise with many possible solutions, and hundreds of companies actively involved in developing new ones (because they can see the opportunity). It’s not an impossible technical problem - it’s an EASY problem. Humans have been storing energy since the first caveman noticed that rocks placed close to the fire stay warm all day. So the problem isn’t technology, it’s just cost and effort. And we don’t need to build weeks of storage out, especially not right away, as it will be built against existing fossil grid stability. Relatively low-tech thermal or gravity-based storage, or off-the-shelf battery tech, can be used in ANY country, along with off-the-shelf solar/wind generators, without risks of proliferation, difficulties with waste management, need for a massive and stable existing grid, or the need for large numbers of trained nuclear engineers (and a society to support these high-skill workers). Since this is a global problem, not a US/Europe problem, we need a solution that works for everyone. That’s solar, wind, and storage. That’s your uncomfortable truth.
@@davestagner There are a few ways to store the kind of power we need to be storing to go fully renewable. But the amount of money and effort, not least the destruction of lands, communities and wildlife that would go with it. Pumped hydro is the only existing, ready to go solution of the scale we need.
In the UK there is at least one of these functioning as a capacitor smoothing out the edges between demand spikes and power plant ramp up/down. I think the documentary on it suggested it could supply the whole grid, but while unlikely physically for it to do that, it would only last minutes.
Pumped hydro has some very strict requirements for a suitable location and even before you consider flooding an entire valley and the impact that has these sites are very rare.
On solar, wind et. al. They aren't only intermittent, they are variable. So it's not like they are on at 100% and off at 0%. There will be entire days or weeks where they are only able to produce 20% of them capacity.
IF, if, we can get storage to back it up, we need enough source energy to meet 100% demand AND recharge the storage in reasonable time, if good conditions prevail.
We can't even get to 25% constant average in countries like UK. Sure there have been a few hours were Scotland over generated wind. But over all it's 25% of demand. ish.
So we don't just need 4 times more solar/wind, we need about 8-16 times more solar and wind.
There will be days when solar and wind will be next to nothing. So we need storage backup capacity to cover that period.
If that is the direction we go, I see heavy taxation, rolling load bans, energy levies for use during poor generation days.
Like not being able to charge your electric car for 3 days because it's been calm and cloudy.
All that said. Local micro-generation with local micro-storage is just about becoming "viable" affordable. Like £10k for a 4kW solar array and a 10kWh battery.
Reducing residential load will not make a massive dent in electric usage, but if people steer towards charging their cars at home off the house battery, shifting residential travel off grid would have a noticable impact.
Regards electric cars, sensible estimates indicate a doubling of grid demand even if only all consumer vehicles go electric. Adding in trucks, ships, trains probably more like quarupling the grid demand. Looping back above, that means we need 64 times more renewable generation.
A lot of places are out of land area for wind farms and are building them out to sea. That pony is looking like it's running it's last few miles unless she start shipping power internationally and the headache/loss that causes.
@@1over137 Wind and solar are really separate storage problems. Wind variability is very well understood and backed by detailed data (going back decades on an industry basis). So base load level stability needs can be calculated very accurately for both power and duration, for both hourly variability and seasonal variability. The idea of “What if the wind doesn’t blow?” is a popular criticism, but doesn’t actually reflect reality as measured. Wind a hundred meters up is different from surface wind.
Solar has large daily (well, nightly) gaps, as well as reduced efficiency during cloud cover, so it needs a lot more storage than wind to do base load service. And it would benefit from multiple storage layers - short term for nightly needs, long term for seasonal, and seasonal storage can help with a few cloudy days in a row. But in all cases, the idea that this is an unsolvable technical problem is frankly absurd. It’s just a cost management problem, and getting to where it’s cheaper than fossil even with storage. Once that happens, it’ll be inevitable, for pure economics. As my father used to say, “Can’t never did anything”. Storing energy isn’t impossible. It’s not even hard. And “What if the Sun stops shining?” is ridiculous. (My favorite is “What if a super volcano or an asteroid smashing the Earth blocks the Sun for years?” I’ve seen that crap. Sheesh.)
Now, I totally agree with need 8-16 times more solar and wind. We need to not just replace fossil fuels, but also provide new energy above and beyond what fossil has given us. Survival is insufficient. What I don’t agree on is the idea that this is impossible, or even dangerously difficult.
@@davestagner Try and put some numbers on it. Go and look at some generation mix charts from countries who have adopted renewables in a good way, like a lot of Europe and the UK.
The wind generation charts are NOT constant. They are hugely variable with entire blocks of 2 or 3 days were wind is generating about 10-15% of it's capacity. That is the UK, notorious for it's constant battering of Atlantic depressions and Scotland, one of the windiest places on Earth.
It's not "impossible" in the same way building a bridge across the Atlantic is not impossible. If we put our minds and wallets to it we could do it.
I'm sure the figures exist somewhere, but I'd put a finger in the air estimate that if you by a wind farm capable of generating in your strongest winds, it will be putting out an average of about 25% over the year. Solar probably lower still.
The UK has about 10GW of total renewable generation. If we did have enough storage, we would need somewhere like 200GW and that's before all the transport starts going electric which will double that.
One item that does struggle towards the impossible. Certainly within countries. Land. Space to put the wind farms etc. Sure places like the US have large expanses of mostly nothing to put them on, but places like the UK ran out of "Free" space centuries ago.
I still don't understand how it works. Is the electricity partially stored, or just converted or both?
It just optimizes existing power. It can't store anything. Nothing to do with solar aspect... just the inverters.
@@ColoradoHiker Yes thanks. I just kept waiting until he was going to say how it works. Little disappointing.
The above video brings to mind the possibility of photovoltaic panels that have cells that work in low light conditions, in moonlight or on radio waves and perhaps also on radiation.
Hm. Can the decentralized solar installations in homes not play a much better and fine tuned localized regulating role?
As a nuclear plant operator, I think this is a novel idea.
I'm not sure how we will make a reactive power market, I mean traditional steam/turbine plants have been providing MVARs forever now but there was never a charge for it. I think it just need to be a regulation that all parties on the grid work to balance boost and buck conditions.
It would make safety systems at nuclear plants more safe since we don't have to worry about grid voltages dropping as our safety pumps come online in an accident scenario.
Pretty interesting to see the solar industry starting to worry about grid stability, hopefully it improves without the need of a market for MVARs
How can a cable to a inverter then stabilize the grid when the same cable goes out of the inverter??
WTF there is an Input & Output. That's how Time Shifting Battery Energy Storage work. Quite sure the MODified inverters in this case has Input Lines from the grid.
This was interesting.
So if I understand what you've said it was that night-time solar does not create power via photons (of course), but selectively changes the impedance of the grid in an effort to bring the power-factor closer to 1(more power) via software monitoring and modulating the solar farm connections.
It that it?
Hi Dave. It's really not about the solar panels themselves at all in all honesty, so arguably the title is a slight misnomer. It is to do with the capacitance of the solar inverters which allows the voltage generated by the variable rotation of the wind turbines (which may therefore be causing uneven voltage) to be taken in and modified back to the correct level before being sent back out onto the grid again. But of course if we did not have solar farms as part of the grid system then these inverters would not exist either. As you say, no NEW power is being generated anywhere. But existing power is being saved because if the inverters were not doing that job then the traditional generators would have to do it and that would mean they were producing less 'real power;' that the consumer could use. The net effect is an increase in available power for the end user.
Yes, that's it. The pdf in the first link in the description has a brief but good explanation.
Does it bother you just how full of shit this Vidio is, Kiss Gretta's ring all will be well as your Country goes broke!
@@curtdenson2360 So I'm guessing that you won't be asking Greta to accompany you when you shop for your new solar panel installation.
So essentially these solar farms can be utilized as a battery to modify public voltage use?
not to be too pessimistic but... This has nothing to do with solar and nothing to do with producing energy. Just voltage regulation using inverterters installed at solar farms.
Correct Dominic. I don't think that's pessimistic though is it?
Not pessimistic at all. It's accurate.
I was about to think "wha? solar panel now converts cosmic / background radiation during the night to electrical power?", but you burst my bubble.
@@ricardobocus6304 I was, for a moment, thinking: "Full moon, cloudless night,. . . Nope!
@@patrickbroyer5518 that would be cool.
I thought in times of excess energy wind turbines could be slowed or turned off by feathering the blades. Seems more sensible than keeping them turning and then paying someone else to absorb the excess. But I guess there are issues such as deciding which ones are turned off (i.e. who then gets no income) and whether there is a mechanism that can turn them off remotely from the central grid control as opposed by the owner.
But if the National Grid can have contracts with major consumers (e.g. big factories) to command them to reduce energy then they should have contracts with major generators to reduce or even stop generating. Alternatively it could be done via dynamic pricing, especially if prices can go negative for generators.
I do understand that for fast reactions to stabilise the grid, there may need mechanisms like PV systems absorbing energy. Longer term lots of EVs and smart meters will be a better (more useful) way.
Of companies like BP are investing that sort of money it shows the writing is on the wall 👍
Ironicaly BP has been doing solar for almost 40 Year. I remember seeing BP Solar Projects in Australia in the early 2000s. Almost 20 years ago.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP_Solar - Seems like they sold it to TATA.
Only if they can license the intelectual property of the idea.
Very interesting. Also had a good look at the projected energy supply graph. 2018 UK produced about 1/3 of electricity by renewables, and this graph predicts 2/3 of electricity to be produced by about 2025 (mainly with wind). Do you know how they plan to make up any short fall on a low wind day? We talking over 200 TWh which is a massive amount to be generated by wind farms.
Hi there. My understanding is that it will partly be energy storage, in batteries and partly due to a more distributed smart grid, probably across all of Europe, sending the power where it's needed, when it's needed.
Just Have a Think thx for your reply. Just seems we are no where ready to be reliant on renewables, it’s way more complex than just hoping all of Europe will come up with a plan (keeping Brexit in mind). We’ll have to be able to store massive quantities of electricity for those events of nor wind for a week or two. The South Australia battery is the largest in the world but still only had capacity to run Adelaide for something like between 1.5 & 3.5 h depending on the type of load. To have storage to run a country & have also a secondary storage backup source for a number of days will be vast. Then we need to think what rare materials we need for such installations. All of this by 2025? That’s a massive undertaking and I would love to know not how the government installs the wind farms but the storage plan. Can these batteries run factories for example? Maybe till we have a good solution nuclear will have t be part of the solution. Will be great to get more input from those in the know.
I know you work hard to clarify subjects like this. But I watched this video twice and was unable to understand how a solar array helps the grid at night. At first I thought you were saying that the solar energy was somehow stored on the grid itself. But that cannot be right. Can you try again?
theconversation.com/how-a-solar-farm-in-south-east-england-could-bring-a-new-dawn-for-renewable-energy-99530
The energy is stored in batteries. See the link. We could also store it in flywheels, as hydrogen or as heat.
@@franklinrussell4750 But this episode wasnt acutally talking about energy stored in batteries, its about energy stored in capacitors which can be filled and released in 1/60th of a second. Each home inverter has enough capacitance to store enough power to supply about 100Kw - but only for 1/60th of a second. This enables a thousand of them to push the AC waveform forward or backwards as hard as 100Mw turbine could, which is pretty useful for keeping the waveform regular which keeps current flowing efficiently in the grid.
@@adymode theconversation.com/how-a-solar-farm-in-south-east-england-could-bring-a-new-dawn-for-renewable-energy-99530
Yes, but the energy backing up the grid
is battery storage. A smart grid is an additional benefit. I think we should rethink
the idea of a grid and replace it with
community coops that produce their
own energy. We could then take down all
those hideously ugly high power lines.
1. Power grid has one big problem : maintaining a stable voltage (tension) on the grid, so your appliances don't break.
2. To do this, in a normal system the power plants (generators) apply Reactive power to stabilize the voltage level. Problem is, they waste energy doing that.
3. Solution is : solar arrays inverters (that turn DC to AC) are tweaked to provide Reactive power at night when they're not producing Real power. Power plants can thus only focus on being efficient at providing real power.
Less damage on the grid, lower blackouts risk, more efficiency, more money.
@@franklinrussell4750 Many, many problems with this idea. No grid mean when you have a problem on your autonomous system (which ALWAYS happen), you're left in the dark. When you have an excess of power, it's not redistributed, so it's efficiently wasted. Having a grid connecting every sources allow the most efficient use of renewable power, which isn't constant : the main problem was *Balance*, and this video just explained the clever solution. You can have multiple variable sources, and the system will balance itself without compromising constant sources power plant efficiency, thus it's more reliable. Storage is a different matter entirely.
Interesting.
This tho gave the thought of what if panels are on different timezone, that would allow timeshifting production - with transmission losses tho. Long term thing.
Second, what if solar power were used to make hydrogen (or Co2 recapture carbon fuel) at high altitude to store the energy, and it would flow down - first get that gravity power when it flows down, then use the hydrogen at sea level to generate electricity when needed. Of course high altitude location needs access to fresh water with minimal pumping losses.
Is why a smart grid that can transport energy very long distances is essential to a successful deployment. Doesn't necessarily require anything exotic, just a way to transport electricity thousands of miles with as little loss as possible. We probably have the technology today, but would require massive investment in upgrades.
Or they could just build a SVC (Static VAR Compensator). They can increase or decrease voltage and reactive power dynamically to a setpoint. We use these in North America in many locations and they keep the grid very stable despite renewable.
How do I know this? I work in Transmission in a system control center.
Nathan, I think rather than building additional infrastructure this video is about utilising already existing equipment, i.e. the inverters on commercial solar farms that are not in use otherwise during night time hours.
@@TerraPosse That's logical, but commercial solar farms are not often located where load is located reactive and real power is always strongest near plants/generation and it weakens as power flows through a conductor. Capacitors and reactors are most useful roughly halfway between load and source, or in remote regions far from generation.
I am looking at an actual switching map/Grid map right now, there are 3 major solar facilities in my region (still tiny compared to real power plants) and not one is located in an area where it would be more advantageous to use solar inverters vs SVC systems.
Simply put solar is built in regions where the power flow is strong and therefore does not require additional voltage control systems and if voltage control was required in a particular region it would be there long before solar was ever installed.
You big show off. Was that you got me out of Sir Adam Beck II at Niagara Falls 30 years ago ? I didn't know semi-public Ontario Hydro quit 3 pm sharp no matter what and I was suddenly alone & lost in an empty plant. Got on the roof by the Niagara beneath the power lines, got in some huge room with clanking lifting chains like in Alien, open a door and it was a chuteway down, found a room with the turbines/generators and they had cute brass award plaques like "Generator 3 awarded best generator of 1982 with a million billion gillion rpms between bearing failures". Then some guy with dials behnd a glass wall said "Hey you !" and showed me the proper escape door. Was that you ?
@@grindupBaker Can't say it was me. Mostly because 30 years ago I wasn't so much operating a hydro dam, and moreso learning how to say dad, mom and use the big boy potty.
As a German on the use of excessive energy; "You Guys get Paid?"
German energy prices nearly DOUBLED because of so called "renewable energy"...air quality dropped too! I can tell because i live in Poland and German imission is HORRIBLE!!!
@@WadcaWymiaru lmao. poland is notorious for their coal power plants and polluting all of europe. get out of here with your nonsense.