12-02-2013, 06:21 PM
quote:
Originally posted by TomK
Apparently, and allegedly, the problem is due to an increasing number of people switching to solar or other renewable means of home electricity production, and that the number of times these systems turn on and off is causing HELCO problems in providing a steady supply of electricity on the grid.
This was a surprise to me and of course I can't verify how truthful the statement was. I had assumed it was an ageing grid infrastructure that was causing the problem but it might be a lot more than that.
It is quite true. I was fortunate enough to have attended a presentation by a couple of HELCO engineers on the challenges that they face with the new sources of power and it isn't an encouraging situation. They showed what their demand/supply system looks like with the PV and wind added to their conventional sources and it's a mess. Before the installation of the distributed sources,their demand followed a fairly smooth - and somewhat predictable - curve as people turned on systems in the morning and operated during the day and shut things down at night. With the distributed sources, they have significant power coming on and dropping off constantly during the day - they are always chasing load and trying to combat frequency and power oscillations across the grid. As a percentage of their total supply, the variable sources are much higher than any mainland utility has had to deal with - there aren't standard protocols for dealing with these effects. We are the test-bed to sort out how to deal with distributed sources on the grid - the solar industry bitches about their limiting the input from PV, but I suspect the alternative is an even more unreliable supply and risk of complete meltdown of the system.
As far as I am concerned, HELCO's greatest failing is in not better educating the public and the political class about the difficulties in dealing with the new sources of power coming on. Utility engineers have had 100 years to develop the old grid - our politicians think we can implement a new - and much more complicated one - in a decade. Good luck with that.