A ten-year old natural gas power plant in California to be shut down!

[thewayne]

But wait a minute! Don't we like natural gas plants?

The problem is that the plant was built with General Electric 7H gas turbines, which take FIFTEEN HOURS to spin up - it was designed as a baseload power plant, that is, to run continuously. And it can't compete with solar and wind. And with a 15 hour spin-up time, it can't function as a peak-load plant to take up the slack when solar and wind suffer dips. GE now has a gas turbine called a 7HA which is air-cooled and spins up much faster, and when used in conjunction with a big battery backup, makes for a great peak-load plant.

But that's not what this plant is, so after a decade, it is going bye-bye. That's going to be a heck of a write-off, it was supposed to run for 30 years, so there's no way they're remotely close to having recovered costs.

It apparently is going to be sold to a battery plant and turned in to something like the monster Tesla peak-load plant that they built in Australia that is very popular. After all, the site already has all the electric grid interconnects and nice big buildings.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/06/in-california-a-young-natural-gas-plant-closes-down-as-renewables-get-cheaper/

Comments

[silveradept]

Interesting! Systems need to be on for only a small amount of time these days when a lot of power comes through renewable resources. I wonder what the grid in the PNW looks like, given that there's a big push for tidal energy in and around that area.

[thewayne]

It'll be a similar problem around the world as power generation switches to renewables and greener sources.  Base-load plants will be retired or converted to peak-load filler plants.  It's a shame that a plant that's only 10 yeas old is being written off in such a way, it's really a victim of bad economic forecasting and perhaps bad luck that it was made with a slightly older turbine.  But you should the press on Tesla's monster battery peak-load installation, it's quite a thing and tremendously successful.  They have a huge wind/PV array near it to keep it topped off and ready to be of service.  It's recovering its costs quite nicely apparently. Could you imagine how effectively it would bolster the American grid with a dozen of these near the dozen biggest cities, then build another 50, one in every state?  You'd have a problem with NIMBYism, but build them in the states that want them and wait a few years, and the NIMBY arguments will probably go away.

[silveradept]

If it can effectively make costs back and provide cheap energy to the state and some surrounding states, then they'll all be the rage, much as I dislike the person running Tesla. Green power is good. (There's something about all the rare earth mining it would take, but maybe if they were exceedingly long-lasting, it would give the planet time enough for us to heal it and deal with the waste products.)