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Solar Farm Grid boost at night! How do they do that?
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- čas přidán 16. 08. 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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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 CZcamsrs 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.
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 CZcams 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?
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 :)
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
BP has been involved in Solar and batteries since at least 1990, so their interest in renewable power goes back a long way.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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. czcams.com/video/3RUY0BUgFjs/video.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. czcams.com/video/KQ2Eo6wl5r0/video.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!!!
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
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.
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)
The links you put in the description were helpful. It's nice to hear about solutions.
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!
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Why isnt this being told in America! We have been kept Ignorant for OVER 10 years or More about the Energy LEAPS!! This is Only Discussed in Berne Sanders Green New Deal and I have a feeling that some of the EXPERTS he used to figure Out his Massive rebuilding of our Infrastructure and Transportation while changing AGGRESSIVELY to Green Clean CHEAPER Energy! Creating MILLIONS of jobs with Training Programs for those that want it for Transition working Class, change in careers, Building Affordable Housing in every Community for Training and to end Homelessness and to Create sm. Businesses! Just a quick bio of Plan>SO much More in His Policies and Administration for change from Fossil Fuels in the Most Aggressive manner possible>sounds like these companies are ready to help While Creating more American Sustainable Companies making Products to Build here in USA, His protection Regulations are wonderful and so very needed!
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)
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.
AC/DC Rocks ~:) thanks for your stupendous contributions.
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.
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.
Wait do you need these smart inverters to be connected to solar panels, or can you deploy them in the grid as they are?
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
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.
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.
Most residential solar panels have a diode that prevents reverse current...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
He said that home solar systems could reflect back power at night. He seems to be saying that the utility would be drawing power from many home energy storage batteries. Batteries are vulnerable to failure from normal usage, so it sounds like a fast track to killing home owners energy storage batteries.
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.
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.
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.
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
Need to switch to wide scale use of a world-wide HVDC grid. AC transmission is limited to about 1k miles due to the 50/60 CPS frequency. All major power generators would feed into the HVDC network and communities would convert to local voltages and frequencies as needed. Storage systems would support the network, and poorer countries that have large swaths of underutilized land could have massive solar farms that could generate wealth for their nations.
, 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.
Hm. Can the decentralized solar installations in homes not play a much better and fine tuned localized regulating role?
Variable price of power will help 😀
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.
The comments in this video should be a RED FLAG to everyone. What specifically? That in general we don't as a society understand some of the fundamental aspects of the electrical grid, a system everyone who isn't homeless is using and relies on everyday. This directly impacts how you might view energy policy and more importantly, how you might be setting yourself up to be manipulated by politicians or lobbyists, on either side of the debate. This isn't a new technology or technique, other than that it was applied to a solar installation more recently. If you all enjoy your representative governments I urge you to start paying attention and stop taking these systems you rely on everyday for granted. Engineers and those that understand systems like myself are getting real annoyed and frustrated and at this point feel like it might be time to take that ability to influence government away. In my case at least, while I feel more like a philosopher king, would not hesitate to crush resistance to unfamiliar policy with force if I had to. Representative government keeps both the philosopher king and the despot tyrant from telling you what to do, at the cost of some extra responsibility on the part of the citizen. Its up to you.
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.
another good video, solar into thermal generators with mirrored sunlight will definitely change things soon
I Think Mister Think is referring to Power Factor correction by the addition of capacitive load but I'm not sure what the high-low voltage balancing bit is about so perhaps it's something else. I'm going to explain Power Factor correction and if it's something else then whatever. Electric motors are almost entirely an inductive load (their resistive load is only the inevitable inefficiency 5% or whatever that heats them). This means that the current being drawn is not 100% in phase with the voltage being supplied to push current, which means that over 1/120 = 8.3333... milliseconds the electric motor is using the supplied current part of the time but is providing current to the grid part of the time. All electric motors do this, it's an unavoidable energy waste (note 1) of electric motors, not something fixable. Fortunately, the Power Factor is closest to perfection (no waste) when the motor is loaded to its horsepower/Kw limit so when you bite that saw into wood and it's pulling a lot of current it "pulls into phase" so they have maybe Power Factor = 0.87 (I forget, I'm retired and my brain's winding down, I did some of this for a living). That maximum-load optimum P.F. is engraved on the motor nameplate additional to its efficiency (its heat loss) like "eff. 95%", "P.F. 0.87" or something. When the motor is just idling under no load maybe its Power Factor = 0.12 (very low). This means that every 8.3333... milliseconds (Canadian 60Hz) it draws the current that the grid is providing for 8.3333 * 0.12 = 1.0000 milliseconds and for 7.3333 milliseconds the electric motor is providing current to the grid (it definitely doesn't provide more power than it gets even if it's out of phase and providing current to the grid >50% of the time). The reason for it is that electric motors generate a magnetic field for operation (for torque) that is building and collapsing 120 times / second and it draws current as it builds but provides current to the grid as it collapses.
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So the electricity meter for billing the customer measures this over 8.3333 milliseconds:
P1 = V1 * I1 watts used say over 6 milliseconds
-P2 = V2 * -I2 watts generated over 2.3333 milliseconds
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P1-P2 watts over 8.3333 milliseconds they bill the customer for electricity provision less electricity co-generation over 8.3333 milliseconds, which is the correct net cost.
The lower the Power Factor (due to building & collapsing magnetic field with little work done) the higher are P1 * P2 values with the cost P1-P2 watts staying the same.
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Now, finally!, here's the issue with that for your electricity company. You see current to you for work I1 and your motor's generating current I2 that your electricity company pays you for by subtracting it from your I1 cost above. The issue for your electricity company is line losses all the way through the grid to/from your electric motor. You don't pay specifically for those and it makes no difference at all whether it's I1 current in V1 * I1 above that your motor needs or its -I2 current in V2 * -I2 above that your motor generates and sends out on the grid because either way it has to travel through wires from your meter in/out from/to the grid through the wires on the big towers everywhere, through transformers and these things aren't superconductors so the current heats them and that energy is lost, a total waste of money used to heat supply wiring. That's the issue.
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To be absolutely clear, ==all== electric motors alternately consume power and generate power 100 times / second for 50 Hz and 120 times / second for 60 Hz.
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A capacitor is a super-fast charge/discharge battery (with great cost & size for a tiny amount of energy storage, a useless battery). I'm not bothering to find charge/discharge times for the comment but we're talking microseconds or faster. So Power Factor correction for an electric motor (or any inductive load, due to its magnetic field build / collapse cycle) is a capacitor in the same side of the billing power meter as the electric motor so every 8.3333... milliseconds (60Hz Canada) the electric motor charges up the capacitor instead of generating to the grid when its magnetic field is generating and draws current from the capacitor instead of from the grid when its magnetic field is consuming. Obviously, the grid is constantly pumping current into this assembly of the electric motor and its storage capacitor but the electric motor never generates to the grid at its 60Hz rate (note 1) so the line losses (wire heating) are only in the "supply" direction (it becomes entirely P1 = V1 * I1 watts above and -P2 = V2 * -I2 watts never happens because the storage capacitor "buffers" the electric charge instantaneously by charging up & down every 8.3333... milliseconds (60Hz Canada).
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In case I wasn't clear, what is reduced by Power Factor correction is power loss by heating all the electric supply wiring everywhere (ewcept between electric motor and its very-close storage capacitor).
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Analogy: A company sells ball point pens mailed pre-paid and has a good return policy. You order 8 pens, you get them and a bill for 8, you say you've found you only needed 1 pen, you send 7 pens back & the company credits you for 7 pens off your bill & pays the postage of your returned 7 pens. ------ You do this to that company non-stop every 8.3333 milliseconds, they are paying a fortune in postage (that's the line losses heating wiring strung over the fields of England). You order 8 pens and kept only 1, which is an inductive load Power Factor P.F = 0.125 (1/8). It's an idling Power Factor (I'm going from memory ~1990 when I was measuring at the new CBC Toronto building with a Dranetz power line analyzer after their was dispute about cooling some equipment).
Note 1: Overall generation to the grid, if it happens, is a different thing and I'm not typing any more or thinking about it. It isn't this topic of fast-capacitive P.F. correction & line losses.
Wow! 😊
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.
Not a bad 'wind' fall.
Here in the Netherlands is the Resistance is increasing, the people love pastures with cows and not pastures full with solar panels. This is called horizon pollution here.
There is increasing pressure on the government between the environmental plans to be achieved and the people.
There are enough roofs. Yet they are going to sacrifice pastures.
Skip to **update** near bottom for what IS really going on...
I think you may be taking certain assumptions that are not in fact. Both the 1st and 2nd laws of thermal dynamics says your explanation of light source is in error.... you can’t get more energy out than put in... and energy remains a constant over time (both laws simplified for the layperson) ... so, somehow using inverters to essentially upgrade the power put into them isn’t possible as explained ... Watts = Volts X Amps which never changes no matter how you slice it...
Then there is the phase shift issue... the grid, in GB, is synced at 50 Hz... they couldn’t just have it picked up by inverters and sent back somehow amplified “a second or two” later-it would have to be sent back precisely in phase which one might think would be rather easy since at 50 pulses per second close would be good enough, however, this isn’t the case... it MUST be precisely synced otherwise catastrophic damage will occur to the weakest grid component (the inverter which likely would have protection circuit but would render it impotent until a reset was made) AND the out of phase pulse would weaken the grid effective power as the collision nullifies the grid peaks and valleys which would defeat the purpose of using the inverters as a reactive power generator...
I’m not saying Lightsource is a pipe dream or quackery, however, your explanation of it either got lost in your simplification or certain essentials were not released that you did your best guess to fill in the blanks and somehow missed...
It sounds to me as they are
using battery stored energy and just using the inverter as sits in idle in phase as a generator for several seconds during the peak need hurdle then once the need has cleared or been made up by a traditional turbine source, they pay back the energy to the battery banks likely in a staggered pattern...
Something else they could be doing is essentially using the inverters as an AC equivalent of a Buck Converter but then they would have to take a hit to the voltage (allowing it to sag) to stabilize the current at a higher level, which for the purposes of reactive power does not seem beneficial to me...
**UPDATE** I sent the link to this video and others to an retired electrical engineer who had he not retired 20 odd years ago would be working on this type of grid problem... after reviewed the info, Kurt has quickly figured it out the jargon... all they are doing is using the inverters a cleaver way of power factor correction which is not new, just using a novel use of existing solar inverters.
“They are adding out of phase leading reactive power to cancel out some of the inherient lagging reactive power “ thanks Kurt. No new power is created or stored just better utilized.
Reactive power is nothing but the power oscillations in the circuit due to inductors and capacitors present. It is really confusing when we are studying reactive power only with the phasor diagram, here I have explained the concept with the help of fundamental waveforms. Also explained why reactive power compensation is necessary, how we can compensate. Must Watch
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!
Good, challenging and informative video, but the financial benefits of offering this technique grid wide will go to the suppliers profits, not to consumer savings.
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!
ThankU for sharing and posting.
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*
Wait so the converters were used at night to help balance the grid but did the energy still come from traditional sources?
Just a few thoughts.... But I've seen and read about alternate ways by which solar power could be used at night without electrical storage batteries. Where appropriate, one idea was to pump water with ginat pumps high up into immense reservoirs (Mountain storage for instance), and let the water run back down the reservoirs through large turbines at night. Another suggestion consisted of pulling trains up slopes during the day, and allowing them back down the tracks during the migth, and somehow harnessing the power as the trains roll back down the hills, or mountainsides... Another was to link international grids where the sun shines at different times of the day at different places....
The above would require much more solar collection to augment the supply to be used during the evening, except of course through international grid systems.... We are only starting to use our intellectual assets and put them to better use. The fossil fuel industry needs to realize that we are all in the same boat, and that this boat has many holes to plug up... So let's do it together and forget about making a few more trillons.... whcih won't be enough to buy a single loaf of bread if we can't grow food.
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.
Domestic electricity prices are going to skyrocket, I'm not an expert but obviously companys are strategically preparing for this and allocating investment into things to help this happen.. I done some research on the biggest solar farms in the world... There are farms the area of London.. But yet they barely produce enought electricity to power a fraction of a city that size... I'm afraid the detail of a cost benefit analysis of these technologies is not very good... I can't see how we are going to produce enoght electricity to convert from petrol cars to electric cars without a dramatic increase in power plants and electricity supply without major spikes in electricity prices for everybody including households that don't run a car.. Im sure the uk needs 2.2 twh to run... Thee largest solar farm is producing 2gwh... That's a solar farm the city of London producing 1000th less than what's required?????????? I really don't no how this is going to work unless some people could make some real detailed documentaries to explain where I might be wrong or put people's minds at ease.. I might bee miss reading there output but I'm sure it's 2gwh
For home solar panels inverters are not strictly needed. Many electrical devices runs on DC anyway, and USB charging is pretty much universal now, so DC only homes is a possibility.
Sounds like the PV panels take no part in the voltage adjustment at night. On the other hand it also sounds like the large scale inverters attached to large scale solar can be used to influence grid voltage.
The solar panels cannot store energy at night or indeed at any time. The inverters on the other hand could be used to effect the grid.
The real problem is the storage of energy which can be used when the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow. Using the inverters at night for another purpose is a tweek to the grid, not a solution to storage.
Yes its a tweak to incoming wind energy with the inverter only. Assuming the wind is blowing.
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!
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.
I understood that the solar station uses there network to feed Wind power at night into the grid instead of solar, cause there’s no sun at night?
theres quite a simple fix for balancing renewable spikes without wasting or getting consumers to burn more power, just build desalination and electrolysis plants for hydrogen fuel.
Solar power has its place. I prefer to keep any power I generate to myself, though. Being off grid is quintessentially American. Eliminating energy bills is truly liberating.
" I prefer to keep any power I generate to myself, though". You big stingepot.
What the grid needs is battery storage. This plan by BP + Shell wastes excess power rather than store it.
With BP and Shell embracing green energy, I think that they are ideally positioned to be a large EV charging supplier, by locating charging services at every gas station they own and negotiate with all their franchisees to locate at their stations as well. Many would need a larger footprint, but that is likely less of an investment than the chargers themselves.
Energy is not the issue ....sustainable storage technology is antiquated which in turns negates all the "green" energy production.
Brilliant video as always.
I think a better explanation of reactive power and power factor correction is needed for this video. Most people without an electronics/electrical background aren’t going to comprehend what the difference is and how the power electronics in solar farms are being hacked for PFC, rather than some voodoo about the solar arrays making power at night.
I wouldn't be surprised if this tech and better is old tech...even though I have not seen night solar in person...yet. ..I mean other than a calculator getting powered by a house light...thats a bit small scale though....hope to see this work to make substantial power.
All intermitent power generator companies (eg solar, wind, etc) should be required to supply a steady level of power by storing it first, and only releasing it to the grid with known capacity, and also the required frequency.
This would stop the government having to pay 100's of millions a year to (yes really !) to companies that over-supply, and could fine other companies that claim to be able to provide well beyond their means.
In the past few years, 10's if not 100's of millions has been paid to Scottish based wind farms when they were asked to turn their power off, because the grid was over capacity.
The government needs to get this sorted. They are always crap at getting contracts and making laws that benefit the nation, rather than paying obscene amounts of taxpayer money out to companies that have seen the loopholes.
NHS Nurses could easily get a decent pay rise if the government wasn't paying these energy companies to stop producing energy when the grid is full.
Aarrgghh, it makes me shake with rage to hear how much our government wastes on stupidity like this :-((((
It doesn't sound like this is actually creating power, more like it is increasing bandwidth and conditioning of the power network using inactive solar inverters. You still need an input source to replace solar at night. Battery tech is the only answer for that.
Interesting. Other countries with huge solar energy potential like Australia will be pleased with these tech developments especially if they can boost fossil fuel free desalination output.
you should try living on off grid PV and wind power ( i do ) . you would learn a few things …meanwhile it’s almost 2 years since this video and UK is turning back to coal to make up for renewable shortfalls . Pv is essentially worthless in winter at the uk’s latitude and the wind hasn’t been blowing much lately ..about 2 % of uk’s electricity needs .
Just Think about solarfarms, Big mistake is to Think that the Sun does not allways shine, as fare as I know the Sun is allways on.
Silly me Wright, if we have a grid that is connected over 2-4 timezones, what might that brings us.
Perfect answer Kim. Totally agree 😊
I don't get it.
And I wonder why the video have lowest power demand at 8 am?
All demand curves I seen prior to this goes as a rule of thumb high during day when people are at work office and workshop hours when AC, heating, lights and machines are on. Power should fade during evening and be at It's lowest at 3 or 4 am when most people sleep and most workplaces are shut down.
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.
We need to talk about the grid code requirements for generators to provide voltage support that wind and solar have been let off for the past 20+ years. We also really need to question why a service generators used to just provide under CEGB is now costing money to provide. The idea of markets and incentives is perverse when we must be mandating to deal with climate change and when what was a £35/MWhr + MVAr cost product (marginal price) a year ago is now a £90+MVAr cost product this year.
*See BM reports for prices.
In simple terms he is simply saying they used the Inverters of existing Solar Farms to deliver constant Voltage power to the Grid. Explain it with a few diagrams etc. instead of waffling on too quickly for most to comprehend.
Anytime i see peoples comments and they are asking for "better explainations" then i know they are trolls. How? Because nobody would listen to this if they didnt already have a basic understanding .. And im pro green energy .. I hope my country gets onboard and starts innovating again.
I don't get the technical aspects. When voltage drops it's because current draw is higher than the supply'. It seems to me that to increase the voltage you need to provide current as Power is Volts multiplied Amps whee is that power Colling from? there is a technical aspect here that's not fully explained. Maybe it's to do with just cleaning up the AC waveform or balancing the phases it's not clear to me from this.
Left it a bit late mate.
This video title is deceptive. My thought was someone figured out how to generate solar power at night (wow, I need to lean about that I thought) -NOT TRUE! Maintaining prover power on the grid requires boosting and shifting voltage and current -the inverters on the solar stations can do this when they are not busy with solar power. This entire story amounts to solar stations renting inverter capacity at night. The part that I am miffed about is that the backup power plants required to make solar and wind viable DO NOT get paid to back up renewables (at least in the US). Anything they can do to make renewables look better and everything else look worse...