An electrician (who I don't believe) told me if there's too much power on the grid, they use wind turbines as fans to absorb extra power. Is this really true? Aren't there plenty of power stations they can just turn down a bit? Take your foot off the gas so to speak?
I was also disturbed to hear from him it costs £700 to install smart meters into each home. And in the UK that comes from green tax. Shouldn't that tax be being spent on making more green energy, building new wind farms?
Possibly a bit more for both gas and electricity but around the right ball park figure.
It's always been the case that they had to replace non-smart meters every so often - at one time I think the target was every 10 years. I had a friend who worked for BG and one of his jobs was to organise routine meter replacements (long before smart meters). When it became my turn to have my gas meter replaced I somehow managed to get an appointment that suited me :)
And in the UK that comes from green tax.
Shouldn't that tax be scrapped to make our bills cheaper. It used to be spent on giving us all free CFL light bulbs.
Of course it should be, along with all windmills, solar panels and any feed in tarriffs.
Your confusion arises from the fact they you think they are working for you. Government is not your friend, or your servant, It's your enemy, and wants to be your master. Because if it isn't it fears you might get rid of it.
Coal fired power stations cannot change their output rapidly, and can be willing to pay for the right to generate in preference to reducing output.
So the windfarm notion is not entirely implausible. However, wind turbines use electronics to match the turbine output to the grid frequency, and it seems unlikely that it's designed to operate in reverse for the relatively rare occasions that that would be used.
On balance, then, I doubt that using wind turbines as fans is real.
Sylvia.
Does not make any sense. I think it is done with hydroelectric where water is pumped back up at night when usage is down but what do you do, pump back wind?
See:
That idea has probably come from the use of "barring gear". When not in use, some wind turbines are electrically driven and turn slowly, to prevent semi-permanent sagging of blades or shafts when left stationary in one position.
If there is a risk of overproduction due to wind turbines, simply stop some wind turbines. Wind turbines must have brakes so that they can be stopped during a strong storm (about 25 m/s) to avoid damaging the turbine. Of course greenies will complain about stopping renewable production, but who cares :-).
In practice, district heating companies are installing electrically heated boilers to heat district heating water when there is an overproduction of wind energy and hence the selectivity price drops towards zero, thus saving on coal/oil/gas/biofuel during overproduction.
In areas with mainly cooling loads, wind and solar overproduction can be used to cool water in advance for air conditioning.
The problem with renewable overproduction is not a big issue, but underproduction lasting several days is. IMHO oil/gas should be used to address those periods when renewables are not available, but greenies object also to this.
How do you think a wind farm works when there is no wind? For 50% of the windmills you turn on the fan mode so the rest of them can generate electricity. It's the perfect perpetual motion scheme on a gigantic scale.
Are you an American? It's that sort of argument that makes them feel they need guns to defend themselves from government (and as a penis substitute of course).
I think this highly unlikely. I think turning down is not so easy, since it is AC, and has to respond to sudden loads. What should happen is that the loading on most systems will reduce as the generator is easier to turn, but the frequency remains the same. I do not know what method is used these days as governors. I'm sure its probably highly technical and not two weights and a brake as it used to be on wind up gramophones! Brian
I think when you look at the cost of the meter and the labour costs these days, then nothing is cheap, that is why even minor prangs of you car can write it off as its the labour and inflated cost of parts. So many people buy it and get it fixed instead, probably by a mate at a faction of the costs the insurance will be charged. Brian
Yes, they need a different kind of inverter, way more expensive, to do that.
On the other hand, any synchronous generator (without electronics) runs as a motor if the voltage on the output rises (constant speed, though). I don't suppose they like that on hydro places, could do damage.
Sure. YOu know how people with solar cells sell their electricity back to the power company, when they don't need to use it all. In the same way, when there is too much electricity, it's sent to wind turbines, and they spin backwards and they blow the wind back where it came from. So that later, it will blow in the first direction again when more electricity is needed.
They don't need more wind farms because if too much wind is blown backwards, the seasons will change.
It takes under an hour to change the meter, maybe under 15 minutes, and I would guess the cost of a smart meter is under 200 pounds. At least the marginal cost. In this situation, every cost estimator seems to come up with a price higher than to be expected. Not sure how they do it.
Having a smart meter means they no longer have to send meter readers, so that saves a lot of money in the long run. They can arrange for rolling black outs if that is ever needed in the UK, and they can do time-of-day billing, to encourage people to dry their clothes outside of the electrical rush hour.
Windmills will still be useless when there's no wind. Pity that there's no good way to store electricity.
Smart meters eliminated meter reader people too. Reading a meter could be a real hassle in many situations. Some utilities only did it a few times a year and interpolated/extrapolated the monthly bills. At our cabin in the mountains, the old meters were buried in snow for months. Now I can ask for a realtime graph of power or gas or water use; we spotted a water leak that way.
We do get free LED bulbs and Christmas lights from TDPUD!
The long feeder from the street came down, and they fixed that for free too.
Our regulated private utilities here are excellent. Some towns have taken over local distribution, so are getting less excellent.
None that John Larkin knows about. Pumped hydroelectric storage has been popular for ages, and grid scale batteries are being installed all over the place, but they don't look "good" to John Larkin.
The wind blow enough of the time to make windmills a popular investment. but John Larkin can't work out how the grid keeps on working when the wind isn't blowing at the windmills he can see.
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No, you speed it on its way. Then the next wind farm downstream can take advantage of it and recover the wind you created. Much more efficient than using wires to transport electricity.
It is hard for me to imagine that anyone is taking this seriously. On face value, it's a silly idea. Dig into even the basic facts and it becomes preposterous.
Typical Commander Kinky stuff.
He's not an American. He's an IDIOT who happens to have been born in the US. Don't try to tell me they don't have IDIOTs where you live. Heck, this thread was started by one of the biggest IDIOTs in this forum(s) and is not from the US.
No you don't. The only way they reach you from the money you pay either by a company overcharging or from taxation :)
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