Amazingly good article. In simple terms I explain it like this.
Most people know that AC power is a sine wave.
That's the ideal, as Nicolai Tesla created it a century ago.
In reality motors and appliances load the grid awkwardly compared to the ideal incandescent light bulb. A distorted sine wave has a "poor power factor" and the grid equipment is far less efficient. Transformers and wires get hotter while doing less useful work.
Hot equipment can reach a breaking point and cause blackouts.
Now it is actually true that solar and batteries COULD lend inertia to the grid.
Software can predict where the "heavy Iron" should be. Apparent.com has tech for this.
The problem is "The Agents of Chaos" don't want a stable grid. The Enron's of the world speculate on the momentary price of electricity. They LOVE Solar because because Every Afternoon at 4:20 the Solar Systems quit working, maybe they are smoking weed, I dunno. That manufactured emergency is an opportunity only Gas Frackers can save us from, demanding Heroic prices, for the little bit of gas it takes to avoid local blackouts.
So the Solar stability option is suppressed, even in California, because the utilities don't want it-- they make huge amounts of money at the CAISO Casino, betting on every cloud bank approaching a solar farm as if it were a race track. Imagine how the traders must hate nuclear! How do you win a bet on an energy supply that operates 95% of the time and only buys fuel once a year, and probably has a 10 year fuel contract? Nothing for Enron's "Smartest Guys In The Room" to do to satisfy the gambling addiction.
It would be funny but out of control speculation probably makes California household and industrial bills MUCH higher than they would be in Washington or Utah.
So it's hard to make the grid stable when the money is made on it being unstable. Which is of course why America created utility regulators in the first place, but after nearly a century folks are ready to get fooled again.
There is nothing wrong with California's grid from Wall Street's perspective. It's causing wildfires and poverty and destroying all manufacturing, even data centers in California. But Utility shareholders are happy. Its sad when Wall Street's short term profiteering is the dominant factor in energy policy. Herds of MBA's playing zero-sum gains boosting their favorite stocks aren't serving the people well at all.
You summarize the agents of chaos problem well! Experienced energy author Meredith Angwin discusses the lack of reliability problem extensively in her 2020 book, Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid
In 2021, Meredith Angwin said in an American Nuclear Society blog, "In other words, many plants have an incentive to have these near-misses where very expensive fuel and very expensive plants will be used. In sum, when the grid is reliable, the plants lose out on money—but when the grid is challenged, money can be made. It is a very perverse incentive if you want a reliable grid."
In 2011, The eminent scientists and engineers of the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) were tasked to prepare 3 reports by the California Energy Commission to identify the most cost-effective solution to decarbonize the California power grid. The answer was to build 30 new Diablo Canyon Power Plants.https://tinyurl.com/CCST-Nuclear-1 The greedy special interests did not like that logical answer, so they lobbied against such a solution. In 2025, watch for aggressive anti-DCPP lobbying at the state level.
You are welcome. Diablo Canyon Power Plant occupies roughly one square mile. It's 24/7 reliable annual power production is comparable to five Hoover Dams.
I began my engineering career as an EE with Westinghouse Combustion Turbine Division in 1981. My job was essentially integrator for complete turnkey Gas Turbine packages from the jet engine to the generator, out to the switching yard and everything in between. Damn I loved that job. Our marketing slogan was "The Ready Source of Power." The camaraderie of all the young new hires combined with the amazing mentorship of "the old boys network" of the national power grid made going to work every day a sheer joy. But on the heels of Jimmy Carter's "energy crisis," General Electric Power Generation, our biggest competitor, transitioned from maintaining ready stock inventory of switchgear and LRA to an unprecedented business model of "build to order." As a result, the time to stand up a co-gen or peaker unit went from months to years. Whatever the reason, Westinghouse followed suit. The result was mass layoffs and a downturn in the power generation industry that has, frankly, never recovered. I took my power and EM engineering skill with me to a whole other industry around 1985. From this engineer's vantage point, it always looked like the power generation industry was committing suicide, not struggling to survive. Was it just another corporate driven aspect of the ongoing deindustrialization of the West? It's hard not to see it that way with the kill off of nuclear power and the year over year rise of the fraudulent green energy agenda. Like the fires in LA, the ongoing neglect of our generating and grid capacity appears on the surface as mass incompetence. But also as with LA, incompetence on such a mass, ongoing scale becomes indistinguishable from sabotage.
To calculate synchronous grid inertia, use the formula H = (J * ω^2) / (2 * S_n), where "H" is the inertia constant (in seconds), "J" is the moment of inertia of the rotating mass (in kg*m^2), "ω" is the nominal angular velocity (in rad/s), and "S_n" is the rated apparent power of the generator (in MVA).
Kenneth, thank you for this formula which shows the nonlinear relationship between MVA and synchronous grid inertia. CGNP will include this formula in our upcoming filings at the local, state, and federal level. For regulatory and oversight bodies, one important fact they need to understand is that DCPP's generators spinning at 1,800 RPM are the "big dogs" supplying synchronous grid inertia to the California electric power grid because of the angular velocity squared term in the formula.
So, SGI is really about the ability of power generation to 'ride through' any frequency interruptions? And renewable energy typically is not provisioned to be capable of this - although adding hardware such as synchronous condensers could help - presumably with the result of increasing the LCOE of these generation resources.
You are correct, Neil. The engineering challenge is the massive amounts of energy that are interconverted between rotational kinetic energy and electric power in the heart of a large generator such as found at DCPP. At the present time, the only place that can justify the expensive electronics are facilities at both ends of large DC interties such as the Pacific Intertie that connects Washington state to California. Those sophisticated electronics can incorporate Area Control Error (ACE) to mimic the functionality of large generators such as DCPP's. You would need a huge fleet of synchronous condensers to mimic a large DCPP generator. Solar, wind, and batteries are inverter-based resources (IBRs) that *destabilize* the grid. I predict those energy sources will never replace large generators powered by nuclear, natural gas, petroleum liquids, coal, or large hydroelectric dams. The electric grid has deployed large rotating machines to stabilize the grid for over a century. This cost-effective solution will likely persist for at least another century.
To think the one party Democrats in total control of California wanted to unplug and destroy Industrial Cathedral Diablo NUCLEAR like SONGS. Conclusion: Democrats hate America.
Thank you. It is part of a worldwide leftist plan to destroy the West''s industrial base. Germany provides a clear example of the economic and military security costs. Curiously, the left does not criticize China, Russia, or India. Their hypocrisy is glaring. I think the West is wising up to this Socialist plan.
Amazingly good article. In simple terms I explain it like this.
Most people know that AC power is a sine wave.
That's the ideal, as Nicolai Tesla created it a century ago.
In reality motors and appliances load the grid awkwardly compared to the ideal incandescent light bulb. A distorted sine wave has a "poor power factor" and the grid equipment is far less efficient. Transformers and wires get hotter while doing less useful work.
Hot equipment can reach a breaking point and cause blackouts.
Now it is actually true that solar and batteries COULD lend inertia to the grid.
Software can predict where the "heavy Iron" should be. Apparent.com has tech for this.
The problem is "The Agents of Chaos" don't want a stable grid. The Enron's of the world speculate on the momentary price of electricity. They LOVE Solar because because Every Afternoon at 4:20 the Solar Systems quit working, maybe they are smoking weed, I dunno. That manufactured emergency is an opportunity only Gas Frackers can save us from, demanding Heroic prices, for the little bit of gas it takes to avoid local blackouts.
So the Solar stability option is suppressed, even in California, because the utilities don't want it-- they make huge amounts of money at the CAISO Casino, betting on every cloud bank approaching a solar farm as if it were a race track. Imagine how the traders must hate nuclear! How do you win a bet on an energy supply that operates 95% of the time and only buys fuel once a year, and probably has a 10 year fuel contract? Nothing for Enron's "Smartest Guys In The Room" to do to satisfy the gambling addiction.
It would be funny but out of control speculation probably makes California household and industrial bills MUCH higher than they would be in Washington or Utah.
So it's hard to make the grid stable when the money is made on it being unstable. Which is of course why America created utility regulators in the first place, but after nearly a century folks are ready to get fooled again.
There is nothing wrong with California's grid from Wall Street's perspective. It's causing wildfires and poverty and destroying all manufacturing, even data centers in California. But Utility shareholders are happy. Its sad when Wall Street's short term profiteering is the dominant factor in energy policy. Herds of MBA's playing zero-sum gains boosting their favorite stocks aren't serving the people well at all.
You summarize the agents of chaos problem well! Experienced energy author Meredith Angwin discusses the lack of reliability problem extensively in her 2020 book, Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid
https://www.amazon.com/Shorting-Grid-Hidden-Fragility-Electric-ebook/dp/B08KZ51SDP/
In 2021, Meredith Angwin said in an American Nuclear Society blog, "In other words, many plants have an incentive to have these near-misses where very expensive fuel and very expensive plants will be used. In sum, when the grid is reliable, the plants lose out on money—but when the grid is challenged, money can be made. It is a very perverse incentive if you want a reliable grid."
In 2011, The eminent scientists and engineers of the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) were tasked to prepare 3 reports by the California Energy Commission to identify the most cost-effective solution to decarbonize the California power grid. The answer was to build 30 new Diablo Canyon Power Plants.https://tinyurl.com/CCST-Nuclear-1 The greedy special interests did not like that logical answer, so they lobbied against such a solution. In 2025, watch for aggressive anti-DCPP lobbying at the state level.
Thank you for relating power generation to per capita total needs, rather than the terrible metric of ‘households’ so often seen elsewhere.
You are welcome. Diablo Canyon Power Plant occupies roughly one square mile. It's 24/7 reliable annual power production is comparable to five Hoover Dams.
I began my engineering career as an EE with Westinghouse Combustion Turbine Division in 1981. My job was essentially integrator for complete turnkey Gas Turbine packages from the jet engine to the generator, out to the switching yard and everything in between. Damn I loved that job. Our marketing slogan was "The Ready Source of Power." The camaraderie of all the young new hires combined with the amazing mentorship of "the old boys network" of the national power grid made going to work every day a sheer joy. But on the heels of Jimmy Carter's "energy crisis," General Electric Power Generation, our biggest competitor, transitioned from maintaining ready stock inventory of switchgear and LRA to an unprecedented business model of "build to order." As a result, the time to stand up a co-gen or peaker unit went from months to years. Whatever the reason, Westinghouse followed suit. The result was mass layoffs and a downturn in the power generation industry that has, frankly, never recovered. I took my power and EM engineering skill with me to a whole other industry around 1985. From this engineer's vantage point, it always looked like the power generation industry was committing suicide, not struggling to survive. Was it just another corporate driven aspect of the ongoing deindustrialization of the West? It's hard not to see it that way with the kill off of nuclear power and the year over year rise of the fraudulent green energy agenda. Like the fires in LA, the ongoing neglect of our generating and grid capacity appears on the surface as mass incompetence. But also as with LA, incompetence on such a mass, ongoing scale becomes indistinguishable from sabotage.
Comment
SGI is not proportional to MVAR.
Here’s the formula
To calculate synchronous grid inertia, use the formula H = (J * ω^2) / (2 * S_n), where "H" is the inertia constant (in seconds), "J" is the moment of inertia of the rotating mass (in kg*m^2), "ω" is the nominal angular velocity (in rad/s), and "S_n" is the rated apparent power of the generator (in MVA).
Kenneth, thank you for this formula which shows the nonlinear relationship between MVA and synchronous grid inertia. CGNP will include this formula in our upcoming filings at the local, state, and federal level. For regulatory and oversight bodies, one important fact they need to understand is that DCPP's generators spinning at 1,800 RPM are the "big dogs" supplying synchronous grid inertia to the California electric power grid because of the angular velocity squared term in the formula.
You’re very welcome.
You’re exactly right, those machines are the big dogs on the California grid and provide huge amounts of inertia and stability to the system.
Amen!
So, SGI is really about the ability of power generation to 'ride through' any frequency interruptions? And renewable energy typically is not provisioned to be capable of this - although adding hardware such as synchronous condensers could help - presumably with the result of increasing the LCOE of these generation resources.
You are correct, Neil. The engineering challenge is the massive amounts of energy that are interconverted between rotational kinetic energy and electric power in the heart of a large generator such as found at DCPP. At the present time, the only place that can justify the expensive electronics are facilities at both ends of large DC interties such as the Pacific Intertie that connects Washington state to California. Those sophisticated electronics can incorporate Area Control Error (ACE) to mimic the functionality of large generators such as DCPP's. You would need a huge fleet of synchronous condensers to mimic a large DCPP generator. Solar, wind, and batteries are inverter-based resources (IBRs) that *destabilize* the grid. I predict those energy sources will never replace large generators powered by nuclear, natural gas, petroleum liquids, coal, or large hydroelectric dams. The electric grid has deployed large rotating machines to stabilize the grid for over a century. This cost-effective solution will likely persist for at least another century.
To think the one party Democrats in total control of California wanted to unplug and destroy Industrial Cathedral Diablo NUCLEAR like SONGS. Conclusion: Democrats hate America.
Thank you. It is part of a worldwide leftist plan to destroy the West''s industrial base. Germany provides a clear example of the economic and military security costs. Curiously, the left does not criticize China, Russia, or India. Their hypocrisy is glaring. I think the West is wising up to this Socialist plan.
Thank you for your efforts and a great article Gene
You are welcome!