Earth Hour

[MO]

your right its all methane powered.

[AU-MUSTD]

Thank's nsw if you guy's can do this everyday over summer we might get a few less blackout's here in vic when all our air con's are blaring.

[jimmy_c]

The planet is in a constant state of change. Now the pecker heads in control or so called in control of things. Invent stupid ideas like this to make people feel better.

We have things to improve our life but the economic scale of living is unjustified for the the people who make our lifes hell. Because they will not make money.

I agree with what Flappist said.

[Monkey]

double post

[Monkey]

Originally Posted by flappist

Typical dropkick greenie stupidity.

Almost all of the electricity generated in NSW is by coal fired turbines. These are just really big engines. Like most engines they like to just sit on a continuous steady output and use more fuel if you change the output constantly.
Like speeding up and slowing down constantly in your car uses far more fuel than just cruising along.
Nights are already bad because the load has dropped after all the day use and heating (cooking) in the early evening.

It is quite possible that this stupid act actually used MORE fuel and created MORE greenhouse gas than not doing it.

Wrong, while power stations do run continuously there output is controlled by demand .
The generator spins at roughly 3000rpm all the time and when more demand (load) is needed they turn up the output placing load on the generator and it starts to slow so the crank up the steam pressure to keep generator spinning at the same speed. more steam needs more coal, less steam needs less coal and when less coal is needed they turn off some of the coal pulverizers.
Collie power station runs at 3250rpm and this can be maintained with only two of its five coal crushers running and at 40kgs a second for each one is quite a difference.
Power output can not be changed quickly like revving an engine its a slow process to synchronize with the main grid to prevent power spikes .
The two peak times are early morning when every one wakes up and turns on there toasters and late afternoon when they get home .

But the whole thing is just to make the everyone feel good .
Getting rid of every second light post down the kwinana freeway would be a real effort to change things. one every fifty meters is over kill
City of lights ha.

[mcflux]

Originally Posted by Psycho Chicken

Clearly fake, everyone knows Adelaide doesn't have electricity.

I heard they burn their water?

[Mechan1k]

Originally Posted by Ghia5L

I heard they burn their water?

On a different note ... I am master at burning water.
Hence why I get the wife to cook :

Back on topic ... I decided to turn the lights off at home ... thing is it is that bloody dark at my place ... after turning off the switch ... it was definitely pitch black I couldn't walk anywhere (I couldn't see my hand in front of my face).

So I just left one light on anyway.

[flappist]

Originally Posted by Monkey Boy

Wrong, while power stations do run continuously there output is controlled by demand .
The generator spins at roughly 3000rpm all the time and when more demand (load) is needed they turn up the output placing load on the generator and it starts to slow so the crank up the steam pressure to keep generator spinning at the same speed. more steam needs more coal, less steam needs less coal and when less coal is needed they turn off some of the coal pulverizers.
Collie power station runs at 3250rpm and this can be maintained with only two of its five coal crushers running and at 40kgs a second for each one is quite a difference.
Power output can not be changed quickly like revving an engine its a slow process to synchronize with the main grid to prevent power spikes .
The two peak times are early morning when every one wakes up and turns on there toasters and late afternoon when they get home .

But the whole thing is just to make the everyone feel good .
Getting rid of every second light post down the kwinana freeway would be a real effort to change things. one every fifty meters is over kill
City of lights ha.

Of course they run continuously. You work in one do you? A nice shiny new one? NSW has some of the oldest and crappiest power stations in Australia.

If the load drops suddenly then the turbines will try an increase in speed. This will be prevented (hopefully) by reducing the steam pressure and if enough then by venting it (like a really big sort of BOV). That energy has just been wasted as the coal has already been burnt.
As the load is increased then the turbine will tend to slow down. The system increases steam pressure and may require more fuel to do so.

The worst scenerio is if the load drops so quickly that the system cannot compensate and to protect the turbines it trips all the breakers and dumps the steam.
This happened in NSW about 30 years ago. The result was the remaining powerstations went bezerk as the load bounced up and down the transmission lines causing the gensets to hunt until eventually they all tripped and NSW had a statewide blackout.

This was part of a course I was taught when I was a first year apprentice electrician in a power station in 1980. This was just before the power generation was taken away from the local electricity boards and centralised with QEGB.

QEGB at one stage had a 60 MVA genset hanging off a gas turbine from a canberra bomber that could spin up, sync and assume load in under 3 minutes just in case a simmilar situation occured up here. 60 MVA is bugger all now but is 1980 it was a lot of power.

But as I said it is possible and hypothetical and as you said it is just feel good fuzziness. But it made a nice news story.

[mcflux]

Originally Posted by flappist

If the load drops suddenly then the turbines will try an increase in speed. This will be prevented (hopefully) by reducing the steam pressure and if enough then by venting it (like a really big sort of BOV).

/me pictures Sundeep and EFFalcon arranging an E-Series cruise to the NSW coal plants :P

[NAK302]

nice to see the wonderful people of Sydeney doing something positive about something that is impossible to control.

our little effort up here (Bowen Basin) was to shutdown the cpp's and stop draglines swinging for a day so the folks in Brissy could have their A/C on in their offices all day. i must confess though, that was a decade ago. hmm chicken before the egg???

[GXL078]

I open my window at work while the bags in the next room have the air con on all day (as they sing along to 2CH.
Not only do I save on electricity but it clears my farts as well (if only I could figure out how to harvest them)