Distributed Power

[Brian H]

The case for using FF to provide distributed power may be stronger than I thought. Here’s a current letter in to Jerry Pournelle’s site (excerpt):

I’ve worked for several of the largest utilities in the country, so this is first hand knowledge.

The utility companies are pretty well stuck. They’ve been vilified by the current administration only slightly less than insurance companies. As regulated utilities, they have a moral and ethical duty to provide safe, reliable, inexpensive power to their consumers, yet they’ve been hijacked by the green movement. In many places, rather than building clean-coal plants for example, which are the cheapest generation capacity currently available, they are building wind and solar facilities with are the most expensive. More important, these new technologies are unreliable, and can only be used for peak power demands, rather than base-load generation. Power storage technology simply isn’t advanced enough to address the situation on a large scale, and across every climate in the country. Even if we had additional generation capacity, we don’t have the transmission capacity to move the power to population centers.

As demand increases, we are headed for widespread brown and blackouts, and the utilities know it. The lead time on new plants can be up to 25 years, and transmission lines can be 10 years. For some, Smart Grid is a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable for a few more years by reducing power consumption, since they can’t build cost- effective new base load generation capacity (coal, gas, hydro, nuclear), for others, it’s simply a means to advance a green agenda and control our standard of living, and for the rest, a way to boost profits and defer costs.

So having ways to boost power supply near to demand looks like a winner.

[JimmyT]

There is another aspect to distributed power which I don’t think has been adequately discussed:

The reliability of distributed power should be much better than centralized plants in the event of calamities. Floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and yes terrorist attacks. Just when power is most needed in the areas which are hit, to aid in recovery efforts. It won’t be available. Outages would still occur with distributed power but they wouldn’t be universal. Often this impacts the availability of water too. Where water must be pumped to users. This makes fire control difficult.

Of course it’s not the generators themselves which are usually taken out by these calamities, but part of the distribution network. At least distributed power would eliminate the long distance power line portion of this venerability.

I know It’s impossible to put a precise dollar value on this sort of thing. But It’s got to be worth something.

[Breakable]

I believe distributed power will address a lot of problems the current centralized power systems cant. Still it is most likely there will be a combined solution between centralized and distributed power systems where each can alleviate others shortcomings. For example when some local FF plant goes down for maintenance the global grid compensates to increase overall reliability.

Regarding the clean coal technology, it is not yet available, and I don’t think any FF fans would support its development 😀

[Brian H]

Breakable wrote: I believe distributed power will address a lot of problems the current centralized power systems cant. Still it is most likely there will be a combined solution between centralized and distributed power systems where each can alleviate others shortcomings. For example when some local FF plant goes down for maintenance the global grid compensates to increase overall reliability.

Regarding the clean coal technology, it is not yet available, and I don’t think any FF fans would support its development 😆

I’ve always regarded “clean coal” as (a) a relative term, since one can modulate the combustion and exhaust in many ways, and (b) irrelevant except insofar as it relates to heavy metals and particulates, since CO2 is a bogus issue. :coolsmirk:

Assuming FF’s success, coal will eventually be eliminated economically, too, as a power source, though probably last because of its comparative cheapness (only about 6X FF). But no new plants will be built. Ever.

[texaslabrat]

distributed power and point-of-consumption generation has ALWAYS been preferred in an idealist’s world. Nothing new about that…that’s just common sense. However, things like economy of scale, pollution, and safety have made it difficult if not impossible to realize. FF might take care of the scale issue (since it *should* be reasonably economical even in relatively small installations), but the fear of a “Nuke-you-ler” accident will keep it far from residential areas for decades by the just-smart-enough-to-be-dangerous elected officials and regulators. Would be nice to have one in every substation, IMHO…kind of a nice compromise in many areas (substations aren’t generally inside residential areas, but are close enough to eliminate most of the distribution concerns). Maybe folks will come around once they understand the differences between aneutronic focus fusion and the nuclear fission of 3-mile-island and Chernobyl fame. Give this country’s current rankings in the math and science scale…I’m not holding my breath.

[Tulse]

texaslabrat wrote: FF might take care of the scale issue (since it *should* be reasonably economical even in relatively small installations)

I think it depends on what you mean by “relatively small” — the analyses others have posted in the forums here suggest that basic labour overhead costs mitigate against very small installations. There really is value in size, although arguably efficiencies of scale in operating and maintenance costs don’t require installations of the size of modern powerplants.

[texaslabrat]

Tulse wrote:

FF might take care of the scale issue (since it *should* be reasonably economical even in relatively small installations)

I think it depends on what you mean by “relatively small” — the analyses others have posted in the forums here suggest that basic labour overhead costs mitigate against very small installations. There really is value in size, although arguably efficiencies of scale in operating and maintenance costs don’t require installations of the size of modern powerplants.

I consider “relatively small” on the order of 50-100MW or so….again, I’m thinking substations, not one on every street corner. Probably overkill in the short term, but as cheap power becomes common expect the consumption to rise to meet the supply 😉

[Tulse]

50-100MW may still be too small in terms of maximizing the value of FF — check out Rematog’s amusing example of the importance of labour costs:

https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/139/P30/#3121

The problem is that as the cost of physical plant and fuel goes toward zero, your biggest cost is going to be operations and maintenance. What is needed is to size plants so that they are most efficient in terms of human resources. Presumably as you scale up there is a point of rapidly diminishing returns, but that point may still be larger than 50-100MW.

Of course, that presumes that the goal is only to produce power at the lowest cost. One might also value distributed generation for other reasons (such as making the grid more robust), in which case having the lowest price per KW-hr may not be the only metric.

[texaslabrat]

Tulse wrote: 50-100MW may still be too small in terms of maximizing the value of FF — check out Rematog’s amusing example of the importance of labour costs:

https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/139/P30/#3121

The problem is that as the cost of physical plant and fuel goes toward zero, your biggest cost is going to be operations and maintenance. What is needed is to size plants so that they are most efficient in terms of human resources. Presumably as you scale up there is a point of rapidly diminishing returns, but that point may still be larger than 50-100MW.

Of course, that presumes that the goal is only to produce power at the lowest cost. One might also value distributed generation for other reasons (such as making the grid more robust), in which case having the lowest price per KW-hr may not be the only metric.

Yep, I’ve read it and agree with most of what Rematog has said. However, as you’ve surmised..the goal of having point-of-consumption power generation (or close to it in the case of sub stations) makes far more sense than trying to build out a super grid..even if the labor costs are a bit higher. If done correctly, the FF generators should be very similar in operation to the current sub-stations anyway….nearly completely autonomous except for scheduled maintainence and emergency repair with remote monitoring keeping tabs on the various performance and health metrics of the equipment. In that, a single team (multiple shifts, of course) should be able to monitor 10’s of gigawatts of generation from a central location, and ditto for the repair crews. I think the labor issue will be much less than is anticipated due to the lack of a need for 24/7 on-site baby sitting.

Or so goes the theory, anyway.

[Tulse]

My guess is that regulations will demand that each site have at least one person there 24/7, if for no other reason than the decaborane fuel used is highly toxic. But perhaps I’m wrong (or the amounts used will be so small as to be of negligible risk — perhaps someone more knowledgeable can clarify).

[texaslabrat]

Tulse wrote: My guess is that regulations will demand that each site have at least one person there 24/7, if for no other reason than the decaborane fuel used is highly toxic. But perhaps I’m wrong (or the amounts used will be so small as to be of negligible risk — perhaps someone more knowledgeable can clarify).

That could very well be the case…at least at first. But transformers have some pretty gnarly stuff in them too…don’t see folks hanging around them except when they blow up. But…as I said a couple of posts ago..I’m sure the regulations will err on the side of paranoia for quite a while, so the subject is pretty much moot until overall social and regulatory acceptance is achieved. Until that time…it’s going to be centralized power or nothing with respect to FF.

[Brian H]

texaslabrat wrote:

My guess is that regulations will demand that each site have at least one person there 24/7, if for no other reason than the decaborane fuel used is highly toxic. But perhaps I’m wrong (or the amounts used will be so small as to be of negligible risk — perhaps someone more knowledgeable can clarify).

That could very well be the case…at least at first. But transformers have some pretty gnarly stuff in them too…don’t see folks hanging around them except when they blow up. But…as I said a couple of posts ago..I’m sure the regulations will err on the side of paranoia for quite a while, so the subject is pretty much moot until overall social and regulatory acceptance is achieved. Until that time…it’s going to be centralized power or nothing with respect to FF.

Even distributed, the labor costs should be quite reasonable, max $400,000/yr per 50MW capacity. Which is $8,000/MW, which is $8,000/8,800,000 kwh, which is about 0.1¢/kwh. The FOB cost of $2,500,000 would amortize over 10 years for about $328,000/yr., and the cost of the boron would be about $5000/yr (max). Which would add about another 0.1¢/kwh, or less. So in large groupings the cost would likely be even lower, as the labor could be spread out more evenly.

The capital cost could be amortized faster, etc., so there are lots of variables, but nothing that would drive the cost as high as 0.5¢ even in the early days, as far as I can tell.

The decaborane is a solid at room temp (melts at 100°C, boils at 213°C), and would just fall out of the air as dust if it left the plasma chamber. Pretty tough to get in trouble with it.

[Brian H]

Here’s a situation that could have used FF urgently a month or so ago: Montana’s aluminum plant, once the largest in the world, is closing because environmental roadblocks have prevented development or access to adequate power:
http://www.climatephysics.com/TurningOutLights.html

Columbia Falls Aluminum negotiated a contract with Bonneville Power Administration in 2006 for Bonneville to supply electrical power until September 30, 2011. But, responding to lawsuits, the 9th US Circuit Court ruled the contract was invalid because it was incompatible with the Northwest Power Act. Therefore, the combination of the Northwest Power Act and a US Circuit Court were the final villains that caused the shutdown of Columbia Falls Aluminum.

But the real reasons are much more complicated. Why was it not possible for Columbia Falls Aluminum to find sources of electricity other than Bonneville?

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