New Zealand Power (from Don't Vote Labour)

[davereid]

Maybe this is a stupid question but what happens if too much electricity is generated. Does it just get wasted or does it start blowing things up or what?

Maybe its because all the powerlines are full

Not a stupid question, and it depends very much on how you are generating your power.

As silly as it seems, when you turn on a light, the energy to make the light go comes from the rotational inertia of a rotating machine somewhere on the power grid. It slows a little to provide the power you need, then the system feeds in more fuel to speed it back up.

In a hydro plant, that fuel is water. So they can "open the taps" and make a pretty good job of matching demand and supply.

Same in a gas turbine, or diesel. Just put the pedal on the gas, problem self corrects.

But a nuke or steam thermal plant is different. You heat water, and blast it through a steam turbine. By controlling the amount of steam you use, you control the amount of electricity you produce. But, if you arent using much steam, you have a problem - The heat you are producing is not being used. So your power station starts to get a bit warm. So you turn down the wick a bit, and gradually thing cool down. No instant response like a diesel, its a slow process.

With a nuke, its harder still. They have to be doing a certain amount of work, or they have to be off. They don't really have an "idle" setting.

Hence, I understand the problem at Chernobal (data may be a bit flaky here,) .. Techs lowered the station power output to 250Mw.. but she was designed to go down to 600Mw no lower.. too much heat going no-where, cooling system gave up, and the rest as they say is history

[Jantar]

...So say we were down one station from New Plymouth closing and this winter the cook straight cable shits itself....... and say Stratford trips...... how long would I be without KB for? After all the other power stations trip in a cascade....

We are already down one power station - New Plymouth has closed.
The Cook Straight cable is down to a single pole - half transfer.
and "Say Stratford trips" - No real problem as that won't cause a cascade. The frequency and voltage will fall, and there will be insufficient PLSR to make up the difference, so the AUFLS (Automatic Under Frequency Load Shedding) will trip and black out around 25% of the North Island. There is a 75% chance that you will still be able to acess KB.

Manual load restoration will commence as soon as enough people turn off their heaters, lights etc and go to bed. Worst case would be around 5 - 15 hours without KB.

[Ixion]

The reactors for naval use are around 190 - 250 MW, but very expensive to operate. For a list of commercial reactors currently certified or undergoing trials see: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear...ucenviss2.html

There are a couple listed that may be suitable for NZ in the future at 180 - 360 MW range.

Stick a nuke on top of a geothermal field. Excess output steam can just be piped down into the field , which will store it, and a standard geothermal plant beside the nuke draws on the stored thermal energy as required.

Or use the nukes excess output to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can then be used as a greenie alternative fuel source. And the oxygen has a ready sale , could be a big export money maker.

And the beauty of it is, if the hydrogen-oxygen plant blew it would a really cool explosion - the hydrogen going up first, taking out the nuke, and the result opening up the geothermal field into a volcanic eruption. A REALLY big bang.

Just *think* of the scale of the popcorn sales !

[Jantar]

Just *think* of the scale of the popcorn sales !

[Fooman]

We do have a diesel power station, Whirinaki. It is owned by the crown and installed for peaking. It is however very expensive compared to other forms of generation per MW. In the vacinity of $200 per Mwhr as opposed to say thermal around $40 to $50.

Whirinaki uses diesel, but is is not a diesel (cycle) station - it is a couple of Pratt and Whitney FT8 twinpak gas turbines, burning diesel as the fuel, rather than natural gas. If the station was been run on a commercial basis (it is not), generation costs would be approximately 50% higher than natural gas (at approximately 7-10c/kWh rather than 5-7c/kWh). The $200/MWh figure is the spot price at which the station is turned on.

NP power station, before it shut down, also had the ability to run on diesel, to fire the boilers, rather than natural gas.

As a general rule of thumb, the cheapest (>5 MW) generation option are gas turbines, running on natural gas. Coal is next (higher capital cost). At my work, we've been doing some work on GT's that have been running on wellhead crude - it rots out the components something chronic, but because it is so cheap (no processing) it's economic to spend a few hundred thousand dollars replacing parts each year.

Cheers,
FM

[sAsLEX]

NP power station, before it shut down, also had the ability to run on diesel, to fire the boilers, rather than natural gas.

New Plymouth could run on Oil, have seen the components there myself!


The reason we got the chimney was it was originally going to be coal!

[rainman]

As any engineer or scientist will tell you, "The laws of physics and the laws of economics are incompatible with each other."

Nicely put!

[Swoop]

I vote that we put the nuke plant in the old Meremere power station. Far easier to get consent "we want to put a power plant where we have a powerplant"...
Two big cities nearby and some can even be piped up to Norfland.

Solved!

I'm a convert to biofuels.Apart from the relative carbon neutrality myth that keeps the hippies quiet,you also get an added benefit that the conversion of food crops to fuel crops and the associated global starvation,will reduce the earth's human population and that will reduce the world's power needs.
A win win situation.

I like this school of thought! Get all of those pesky, starving bastards off of the handout list, after all, they have destroyed their own countries agricultural capacity.

[davereid]

Of course a cynic would argue that Labour KNOW they have come up with a policy that is in conflict with reality !

So, what will happen ?

The market will adapt. Prices will go up, and the G'mint will reap a good profit.

We won't be spending anymore MAKING the power. But as we artificially constrained production, profit margins will be wonderfull.

But little old ladies wont be able to afford their heaters, and they can't light the fire 'cos we banned those LAST term.

So, they wil sit their with blankets on their knees, looking like starving labradors in the paper.

So here's the good bit.

Labour blame market forces, capitilisim, and japanese whalers.

And then, offer a subsidy, for the electricity, for the poor and defenceless.

Who then become helpless enslaved Labour voters, because we all KNOW the other team would switch off the subsidy. (They claim they will lower power prices too - phooey !)

But, because its a CRISIS Labour can quickly build a new coal fired power station as an emergency stop gap measure so the hospitals can keep running, and we can abandon normal planning procedures 'cos its a crisis !

Lucky I'm not a cynic.

[Ocean1]

Can be efficiently made from Sugar beets, wood chips etc etc and requires no adaption for cars upto a a certain % so whay the hell can't some spoddy little engineer (sAsLEX, not you!!) make it work for energy supplies. Oh shit oil and petrolium industry lobbying politicicans!!

So most of the third world cuts down all of their rainforrest to grow Sugar beet... Not only a bad idea, it's already epidemic.

We can turn almost any waste oil into bio-fuel, and it's easy to do in small batches, but the compliance costs make it hugely uneconomic to do it on a large scale. So we're sending lots of our raw materials to Aus, where they make it into biofuel, add it to diesel and sell it back to us at a tidy profit. They can do this because we've recently made 5% biofuel content mainstream diesel supply a formal strategic goal, (which attracts a wide range of incentives) and near impossible to do here.

This is called Pump Storage, and it is very efficient. It only works though when the hydro station has a lake both above and below it.

Pump water back up from Dusky sound to Manapouri? Massive head, so comparatively small quantities, and the water’s fresh(ish).

Got to get some serious extension cords to the coast though…

A seperate debate, but the howls of denial are now coming from most of the scientific community. Its the political and greeny community who keep trying to tell us the debate is over.

Yes, I wonder how history will see this wee experiment in political science...

Oh, so true. As any engineer or scientist will tell you, "The laws of physics and the laws of economics are incompatible with each other."

Perhaps. I wonder who wrote the second set though, and what payback time-scales they consider economicly prudent.

[Ocean1]

Of course a cynic would argue that Labour KNOW they have come up with a policy that is in conflict with reality !

Yes, if there was ever a time when NZ governments developed policy with strategic long-term national development in mind the time is long gone.

Someone eventually worked out that you can buy votes with other peoples money, and the chickens are well and truly home and roosting.

Trouble is they're right, to acquire political control you have to pander to the lowest comon denominator. How do you change the focus back to a best-practice economic model? I think it will take a major depression before big enough changes become possible.

[sAsLEX]

How do you change the focus back to a best-practice economic model?

You remove democracy.

[Ocean1]

You remove democracy.

Did we not have democracy during the post-war infrastructure building boom?

[Jantar]

Did we not have democracy during the post-war infrastructure building boom?

We certainly did. We also had a ready labour force and a government that was NOT going to put that labour force on the welfare dependency track.

[Bullitt]

Thanks for answering my question.

Just to expand on it abit as a hypothetical situation...Imagine we build a 360Mw nuke and all the other stations are scaled back to bring it back to 50Hz....then at 5am one morning when the nuke is still putting out 360Mw and nothing else is operating demand is only at 200Mw. The nuke cant be scaled back so continues to put out 360Mw which ups the frequency to (say) 70Hz at which point something explodes(power plant im thinking not, substation? individual houses?). Am I on the right track?