[Pontiac]

Power plants produce energy whether it’s used or not.

Not true.

Every electric power producer has large power plants that run almost all of the time called Base Load plants.

Then they have medium sized plants that increase or decrease power production to meet rising or falling demand called Load Following plants.

Then there are plants that are started up only when demand is at its greatest called Peaking Plants. Some of these are gas turbine plants that are fully automated and can be started remotely from a Systems Operation Center.

It would be economically wasteful to generate power that was not used and it would cause destructive imbalances in the distribution system.

[stevio]

Someone should tell the Danes this then.

[109ACS]

Instead of tying the wind generators into the grid, wouldn’t it be feasible to use the energy to produce hydrogen (and oxygen) through hydrolysis? Then you wouldn’t care so much about the intermittent wind. You would also not need the sophisticated electronics to synchronize the wind generators with the grid.

Just a thought.

[mad_as_he$$]

Last week I went to the opening of the newest power plant in the West. It is a dual cycle natural gas turbine combined with steam boiler technology. It is a 600 Megawatt plant. It is now the base load plant for our area. It is taking over from four steam natural gas/oil plants that date back to the late 60’s and forward. The new plant is 50% efficient, the old plants are 32% efficient - catch is they are ONLY that efficient in a narrow operating range. Either side of that range and they become very inefficient - as if 32% was not bad enough. So they replaced 32% efficient with 50% and it is now the base load. Not a bad deal in my book.

Incidentally we in Northern Nevada have very good wind conditions, one of my neighbors has four wind turbines to run his house. They are backed up by batteries and solar with emergency tap to the gird. He has to go one the grid about twice a month during the winter and once a month in the Summer.

[F-117A]

Electrical utilities can also buy electricity from other suppliers on the grid, but that is usually an even more expensive proposition.