Weather and wind problems

One of the things we've found out from Maria is that solar and wind are not great in abnormal weather. See the Naguabo Windfarm for exhibit A
















I ran across a story yesterday about weather/renewable problems in Vermont. Vermont is trying to go all "green" with solar and wind energy.

Vermont is also cold in the winter and some winters are colder than others. This is one of those colder winters and they are having trouble supplying enough energy for Vermonters.

Story is here: http://yesvy.blogspot.com/2017/12/more-cold-and-more-oil-on-new-england.html

Perhaps they should not have closed the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant?

The blog has a lot of other interesting posts. The proprietor, Meredith Angwin, is that ava raris a pro-nuke activist. She also has a background that gives her credibility.

Check out her blog at yesvy.blogspot.com

China Syndrome story

I should probably clarify that the China Syndrome story below was not from me. I had mentioned the nuclear plant designer who told me the story of lube pump failure in the great Northeast blackout.

He was the one who told me that The China Syndrome was actually a pro-nuke movie.

This would have been in 83 or so.

The China Syndrome

In the early 80s there was a movie called "The China Syndrome" starring Jack Lemmon, Wilfrid Brimly and Hanoi Jane. I think it was supposed to be an anti-nuclear power movie but it boomeranged.

It is actually a very effective pitch for the safety of nuclear power plants.

A brief plot recap:

1) A corrupt California utility is building a nuclear power plant directly on top of an earthquake fault.

2) Jack Lemmon's character is some sort of project manager or quality inspector and finds that the contractor has been falsifying the pipe weld x-rays. The implication is that the contractor is also cutting corners on the welds themselves.

3) Lemmon goes to management and tries to blow the whistle and gets turned down. Too much money invested to stop now, he is told. He persists and is fired for his troubles.

4) The plant is powered up and there is excessive vibration of the piping. (This seems more like a shock absorber problem than a weld problem but it's a movie, OK?)

5) Lemmon hears about this, goes rogue, arms himself and invades the control room with the intention of shutting down the plant.

6) A SWAT team is called in but can't go into the control room for fear of damaging the controls.

7) A crack team of control engineers completely rewires the plant controls to move control out of the control room.

8) SWAT busts in with flash-bangs and lots of shooting, electrical sparks and so on. Very spectacular and Lemmon is killed.

9) in the meantime a pump vibrates so much that it falls off its mounting necessitating a total plant shut down. This is carried out safely with little more fuss, apparently, than switching off your car ignition.

Early in the movie we are told that "The China Syndrome" is what happens when the reactor goes out of control and melts right through the center of the earth "all the way to China."

So we have all of the above problems and they still shut the plant down with no problem?

That is one safe facility and design. It speaks a lot to the safety of nuclear. It should be shown in every high school every year and someone should explain to the kids what they are seeing. 

Great pro-nuke propaganda

Nuclear power for Puerto Rico

I've been a fan of nuclear power since childhood and especially since attending the Navy's nuclear power school in 1968. Safe, clean, and for those worried about CO2 emissions, there aren't any. No real Jones Act issue with bringing fuel, be it oil, gas or coal, from the US. Pretty robust when it comes to hurricanes. Most importantly, reliable baseload power. What's not to like?

There seems to be some interesting work being done with small, modular, reactors. Of course, there seems to have been some interesting work being done with small, modular, reactors for as long as I can remember. They always seem just over the horizon.

In the private sector, anyway.

The Navy has more experience than anyone with designing, building and operating nuke plants. Generally in fairly stressful environments. They've been building modular systems since the 50's. They are smaller than utility scale but I do not see why the concept could not be scaled up as an alternative to more or less custom designs for every utility plant.

As far as safety goes, nuclear has a pretty stellar track record.

YIMBY - I live about a mile from the Old Roosevelt Roads Naval Station. That would be my first choice for a location for a 2-400MW plant to supply power to the north and east coasts of PR.

Puerto Rico needs all options in our energy mix, including nuclear.

Here's some good news from Caribbean Business newspaper:

Nearly 1,500 additional grid repair workers headed to Puerto Rico

By Caribbean Business on December 28, 2017

SAN JUAN – Eighteen member companies of the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) industry trade group will send nearly 1,500 grid-restoration workers and support personnel to Puerto Rico in January to accelerate power restoration efforts across the island.

...
 
As part of this mutual assistance deployment, hundreds of trucks with tools and equipment will be loaded on ships this week and barged to Puerto Rico, and our goal is for the nearly 1,500 mutual assistance crews from the mainland to arrive on the island by January 12,” added Carlos Torres, the island’s power restoration coordinator.
...
 
With the new arrivals, the total number of power restoration workers on the island will increase to more than 5,500, the EEI said, including Prepa’s own crews, a contingent of crews from New York who are working as part of an intergovernmental agreement and crews mobilized under USACE contracts.
...

Crews will be coming from utilities in the following states:
 
Pennsylvania
Texas
Virginia
Michigan
Missouri
Florida
North Carolina
Wisconsin

Read the whole article, it is very good news for a change.
http://caribbeanbusiness.com/nearly-1500-additional-grid-repair-workers-headed-to-puerto-rico/

Podcast on Puerto Rico post Maria featuring AES

I found Green Tech Media's website/blog a few weeks ago and am finding it very interesting. Its focus is a bit more on solar and batteries than I would really like. They have their place but I think cogeneration may be a better solution for many reasons.

AES is a large US builder/operator of power plants around the world, including the 454MW coal plant in Guayama. Their corporate team did a very good set of recommendations to the PR Energy Commission that I had linked to in a previous post here.

http://energia.pr.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/IN20170002A30-COMENTARIOS-AES.pdf

In their Interchange podcast, they interviewed Chris Shelton, the chief technology officer at AES about the plan. Fascinating throughout.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-plan-to-bring-power-back-to-puerto-rico-with-batteries-and-solar

The mp3 of the podcast is at the bottom of the article and can be streamed or downloaded.

Why electric?

Back in 82 I was building a new house and wanted a better water heater. I found a tankless heater made in France by Aquastar. This heater mounts on the wall and turns on only when water is flowing. I got the large size and it gave about 4gpm (2 showers plus a dishwasher) at about 120 degrees. It lasted 25 years.
 
It was a bit pricey but I loved it so much I got the dealership for Puerto Rico. That was an experience. I never was too successful. People here were completely unfamiliar with and dubious of gas water heaters even though they already used gas for cooking. I did a presentation to the gas dealers association. I figured they were a natural since it would double their gas sales. Nope. "Our customers don't know about it." 

Marey, a local Puerto Rican company has been making similar systems here since 1955. My son got me one so we could have hot water while we have no power. He has had one in his house for a while. We both have the smallest, "portable" model though we have them permanently mounted. Plenty of how water for his family of 4. 

Only $179.

They also have larger models that are suitable for commercial apps. 

https://marey.com/english/products/gas-water-heaters/portable/gas-portable.html

This brings me to a larger subject. Why do we have so many electrical appliances in PR? Cost of electricity is high, it makes no sense to pay 23c per KWH to make heat when we can burn cheaper propane directly. 

Propane cost is $16/20# tank. (Larger tanks are cheaper.) That equates to about 12.5 c/kwh or about half of electric. 

PREPA has a huge generation problem with not enough to keep the lights on in PR. A lot of that generation goes to water heaters,  stoves and clothes driers. 

We should be changing them all to propane. 

Its the patriotic thing to do.

Coal vs Solar

Sometimes only a picture will do the job:

This is a satellite view of the AES coal and solar facilities in Guayama Puerto Rico. Other than caption and outlines, it is unretouched.

The solar plant is rated at 20MW but that means 20MW for the few minutes per day when the sun is in the optimal position. The rest of the day it is less, especially on cloudy days. At night, of course, it is zero. Actual average output, calculated from the amount of energy sold by AES to PREPA over several years, is between 4 and 5MW. This power is non-dispatchable and somewhat random as well.

Batteries will eventually help smooth out the randomness and bring some degree of dispatchability. That will add to the usability but will not do anything to significantly increase the total power generated. 

The coal plant, on the other hand is rated at 454MW. That means it can run for extended periods of time, if needed at 454MW subject only to fuel availability. They keep 60-90 days supply on hand.

Eyeballing the two, it looks like the coal plant, with 100 times the capacity, occupies about the same amount of land as the solar plant.

Our very own Prince of Darkness has decreed that we will eventually have 25% of our total power. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.

By way of comparison, this is what a 4MW, truck mountable, diesel generator looks like:

Map showing Puerto Rico generation and transmission resources

This map is extracted from the working group's damage assessment report linked earlier.

There are 1,775MW of theoretical capacity located north of the central cordillera/mountains counting the Daguao (Ceiba) and Yabucoa (Humacao) plants

It is theoretical since much of it is out of service for reasons not really related to the hurricane Maria.

Wishing everyone a bright, bright, Christmas of green

Month 4

Today we enter the 4th month without electricity in my neighborhood.

Every time I start to feel sorry for myself, I think of others that not only have no light but no water, no work and in some cases no home.

A huge thank you to all of those folks from the military, fuel delivery services, electric companies and others who are spending Christmas away from home to help us get back to some semblance of normalcy.

And a special thanks to the US taxpayers who are footing the bill. 

Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, let us count our many blessings.

Blowing smoke, not wind

Puerto Rico govt has a goal of 25% wind and solar power. I have some thoughts about solar but wind seems to be a misguided effort. 

We hear how the wind blows all the time here. Soft Caribbean breezes and all that. And, of course, the occasional hurricane. What we do not seem to have is good wind energy sites. 

This is a map showing wind energy in Puerto Rico at 50 meters elevation. It was done by Dept of Energy and available at several sites on the web.

The key thing to notice is that of PR is colored white. The legend tells us that White means 5-9 meters/second windspeed and is rated "Poor" There are some beige areas offshore rated "marginal"

In a press release from Gestamp, who developed the now defunct (temporarily? Permanently?) Naguabo wind farm, they take issue with the poor rating saying that at 75 meters, the height of their towers, the wind speed is marginal. True, but just barely.

So how much energy did the Naguabo windfarm generate? You can download a report of month by month electricity sales to PREPA for all non-PREPA suppliers such as Naguabo. 

https://aeepr.com/Documentos/Ley57/Tablas%20Compra%20de%20Energ%C3%ADa.pdf


I ran their numbers through a spreadsheet and find that they generated on average a tad less than 53,000MWH/yr with an average output of about 6MW or a shade more than 25% of nameplate capacity.

 Doesn't seem like a lot of power for such a massive, unsightly, expensive investment. Not to mention non-dispatchable and inconsistent.

 Their contract, available here shows PREPA paying 12 cents/kwh (Years 1-5) decreasing in steps to 9 cents in years 16-20.

https://aeepr.com/Documentos/Ley57/CONTRATOS/Contrato%20Solar%20Project%20Ponce%20(Fonroche%20Naguabo)%202013-P00045.pdf

 

Should PR really be thinking of windpower?

Residential solar system cost

I ran across an interesting brochure from greensolarpr.com on how to tell whether solar is right for you. It includes how to calculate size and gives some average costs. The assumption is that it will be tied into PREPA. If not tied to PREPA, there may be some hardware savings offset by the need to have batteries.

I thought this was the key paragraph:


Residential Grid
-
Tie systems can start as low as $2000 (installed) for a starter system, all the way to $50,000 or more.

Average Component Cost:
$5 per watt. This includes all the components including panels, inverters, mountings and electrical accessories.
 
Add $2 per watt for battery backup systems.
 
Average Installation Cost:
 
$2 per watt. This usually includes the physical installation of the system and connection to the grid.
 
Example:
 
For  the  example  above  4.52 kW Grid  Tie system cost  is  near  $22,600  and  $9,041  for installation  cost  including  design  and  permitting  for  a  total  of  $31,645.    Adding  a  battery backup system for emergency power can add additional $9,041 to your system for a total of $40.687.
 
Your system total price can vary as little as 10% more and as 20% less depending on various factors such as design, PV shadow, type of PV and price negotiations.  Therefore your system estimated range is 25,316 to $34,810 for Grid Tie PV Direct and $32,549 to $44,755 for a Grid Tie with battery backup.

[Emphasis added]

http://greensolarpr.com/pdf/How to Calculate your Solar PV System.pdf 


This is a system for a home using 600KWH/month. If we assume 25cents/kwh, the annual cost of purchased (PREPA) power in this example is $150 per month or $1,800/yr.

If we use the lowest number in the installation range (because everything always comes it at low range, right?) we can call it $25,000

We will assume that once the system is installed, all electricity in the household will be free. There will be some maintenance costs over the life of the system but they are probably going to be minor. As long as we don't get another Maria, or Georges, or Hugo etc. so let's set them aside. 

Simple payback method divides the total cash outflow by total cash inflow:

25,000/1,800 gives us a payback of just under 14 years. If it is the high end of the range, it is $45,000/1800 or 25 years.

The calculator does mention rebates and, though not mentioned, there may be tax deductions or credits. This will bring the cost of the system, to the homeowner, down and maybe make it attractive. Unfortunately, it doesn't really bring the cost down. It merely shifts the cost from the homeowner to other homeowners/taxpayers, to PREPA, to other PREPA customers and to others. 

Doesn't seem right for neighbors to be taking from their neighbors.

Don't get me wrong, I have been interested in traditional and alternative energy  since the 60's. I studied nuclear power in the 60's, learned about OTEC in Dr Werner's oceanography classes in 1973 at IAU. In 1975 I sold solar water heaters in Puerto Rico.

If solar electric made economic sense, or perhaps I should say when solar makes economic sense, there will be no bigger fanboy than me. We are getting closer and closer to that point but we still have a ways to go.  

Battery technology is needed to make it feasible and there are some amazing things going on with large scale batteries. We are not there yet, either.

"Puerto Rico Reconstruction: Lowering Electricity Costs Requires Big Changes" By Kerinia Cusick

It's a a month and a half old but I just ran across it the other day. Excellent article and needs to be read by everyone with an interest in PR's energy situation.


Puerto Rico Reconstruction: Lowering Electricity Costs Requires Big Changes

    By Kerinia Cusick, www.linkedin.com
   
    October 27th, 2017

Puerto Rico holds a special place in my heart. My husband was born there, we have family there, and I’ve spent idyllic vacations on all three of its main islands. I also spent two years in the trenches trying to get solar built on the island, only to be frustrated at every turn. ...

Read the whole thing here:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/puerto-rico-reconstruction-lowering-electricity-costs-kerinia-cusick/

La Verdad sobre la situacion Energetica en PR

Robert Garcia-Cooper wrote an excellent report about PREPA a few years ago. I found it on the web while looking for something else and am glad I did. It is a public document and he has granted permission to publish it here. It is in Spanish:

La-Verdad-Sobre-La-Situacion-Energetica-en-Puerto-Rico-Estudio-independiente-realizado-por-Robert-Garcia-Cooper.pdf



At 56 pages, it has a lot of information about PREPA. Robert put a lot of work into it and it shows.

Thanks, Robert.