zapkitty wrote:

This subject of servicing the generator units has bothered me a lot. How to provide uninterupted power to communities or factories which are widely dispersed?

Solution 1: Maintain an interconnecting grid to provide power when units are down.
This strikes me as a terribly inefficient use of resources. Maintaining a grid for use only a few hours each year.

Solution 2. Have duplicate generator units at each station. Or alternatively place units where power demands dictate the placement of two or more units. Then, service them during off-peak hours.
Again, idle units are a waste of capital, and would be intolerable until the market is virtually saturated.

Comments? This post probably doesn’t belong here. New thread maybe?

The current practical solution would be a combination of 1 and 2.

Communities and large installations such as factories and hospitals will demand
backup units… and the low price of DPF units will make that option especially attractive.

And the grid will retain its current extents for the same reason it currently exists… shifting
power to where it’s needed while buying and selling power produced in excess of local needs.

Another way of thinking of this is that the ready availability of cheap, clean power will
in no way reduce the current demands for power generation and its transport.

Will there be changes in the grid structure? Yes. But DPF by itself will not render the
concept of the grid obsolete.

I actually think that it might. It may well become cheaper to generate more power where it’s needed then to maintain the infrastructure to transport it.

I’m no expert in failure analysis, but I have a sense that grids may at some point decrease reliability.