Paying attention to energy discussions on Twitter
I apologize for the virtual silence here over the past couple of weeks.
I’ve been keeping up a fairly active presence on Twitter, posting short updates and getting involved in a few serious conversations as time allows.
Even if you do not have a Twitter account, you can read my feed at https://twitter.com/Atomicrod?s=17
One topic that is keeping me up at night is the stress being put on the grid and on fuel supplies by the extreme weather. I hope that my friends and everyone else in New England and on the Atlantic coast from north Florida up stays reasonably warm and completely safe.
I hope the winter reliability program oil doesn’t run out.
So far, I’ve been impressed with the fact that 99 out of 99 nuclear reactors in the U.S. are operating at or very close to full power. As of yesterday, there were just 5 that reported a power level less than 100% in their daily status report to the NRC. Those 5 were at 99, 98, 94 and 2@93.
For whatever reason, VOX’s Umair Irfan decided to write a story about the cold wave and energy supply without mentioning that fact.
For whatever reason? How about … because it is VOX?
The guy even quotes David Roberts. What did you expect?
Did Umair Irfan understand what those graphs mean? Did he notice that the “South Census region” uses ~2,000 more KwH for the same number of degree heating days as the US average and I would conclude that probably about 4,000 more than the northern half (the area left out of the data used for “Southern Census region.” That speaks volumes of the energy efficiency of this area. “Southern Census region.” I rarely even turn on the furnace until Thanksgiving or later. Just where are all of those KwHs going to come from with all of the shutdown coal plants?
I had read some of the other reports on the energy usage and demand perturbations on price, Looking forward to a review of what happens and how the grid responds with the loss of the coal plants. Lived for two weeks with a gas stove in NJ back in the 70’s that had a 1/2 the flame height at 10 as it normally did at 5. Furnace would run twice as long when it kicked on and I even had two Kerosene heaters running whenever I was awake. Meanwhile PSE&G (NJ) was converting Coal to Gas to keep the pressure at a usable level, with many large industrial NG users curtailed. Would like to see a good write-up on this event.
Maybe there needs to be some (limited) unfortunate consequences from the choices imposed on our fuel supply.
OT: Westinghouse bought by a Canadian investment fund. Good luck getting design/technical support out of these guys, Vogtle.
Rod, I know what you mean. I have been watching the grid and posting on Twitter and FB. It’s like this polar vortex is moving too fast to blog about it! (though I did blog.)
So far, the winter reliability project of ISO-NE is working: the project basically bought oil to store on-site. Honestly, how can people be okay with “winter reliability projects” that run $30- $70 million for a few months oil on the New England grid and yet—still many of the same people make fun of Rick Perry for wanting to reward plants that can store fuel on site!
It boggles the mind.
Rich said:
“Just where are all of those KwHs going to come from with all of the shutdown coal plants?”
Do they need as much with all of the industrial capacity that has been shut down in the past thirty years? Do they need as much when folks have transitioned to LED lighting, better insulated housing, energy efficient furnaces and refrigerators, etc? Do they need as much when folks have lost real adjusted income over the years so many are more frugal?
The Times They Are A -Changin’ – Robert Zimmerman
Hi, FermiAged.
Could you please expand upon the latter part of this…
“OT: Westinghouse bought by a Canadian investment fund. Good luck getting design/technical support out of these guys, Vogtle.”
Best regards,
Jim
They still seem to be having issues meeting peak demand during weather extremes, so they need the capacity even if not as many kWhs.
Here is the wikipedia entry for Brookfield Asset Managers which has tendered an offer for We$tinghouse:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookfield_Asset_Management
No commercial nuclear power experience. A foreign owner of a company that does work for naval reactors. They do have renewable power experience.
My concern is that they will tighten the screws to “enhance shareholder value”, “streamline the business model” and “leverage the core strengths of Westinghouse” or whatever today’s business buzzwords are. In other words, make it look real pretty (financially speaking) and then flip it.
Perhaps not when much of our manufacturing is done in China. California manages a low carbon footprint when it imports a third of its electricity from other states.
We can now go on developing internet content.
Try searching “Power Usage Increases in areas With High LED Usage. Even frugal me has noticed that I no longer worry as much about lights being on 24/7.
Thanks for noting how the real time market was reacting to the interplay of supply/demand during the storm.
On the 3rd CASIO had a bit of a supply/demand glitch leading to $1400 prices in the middle of the day (around 1315). It was a good day to be the owner of large scale batteries as they were able to help keep the grid up during the event.
I did my part by turning off the news so my PV system could send another 200 watts, for 30 minutes or so, to the grid during the event. I wonder if my efforts will ever show up in CASIO new grid reliability program-
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-grid-operator-reluctantly-announces-it-will-become-its-own-rel/513993/
Thanks for the clarification. Pretty much in-line with what I thought you might be implying.
Employees probably have quite a few concerns as well, but heck, they were once owned by CBS.