ANDREWS: Nobody is talking about this

Published 2:43 pm Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Nobody is talking about the danger to the electrical grid on the introduction of solar panel power generation. Let me take you back to 1962 when I was involved with my third startup of a large coal fire generator, 300MW. I remember walking out of the control room to the boiler burner from where four large pipes were delivering coal to the burned. Each pipe had a glass to view coal flow. The coal flow was not slow. The next morning I went up to the bunker level where the coal was stored and looked down into the near empty, very large bunker space. I got the feeling that we could not keep burning coal this way. We kept the unit on full load for a year. The electrical grid must maintain frequency, voltage the same. Variants cause damage to devices connected to the grid so the grid is programmed to disconnect and shut down.

The problem is that solar panels go from full load to no load as clouds pass over, destabilizing the electric grid we depend on. This can happen many times a day. The problem is the shutdown of coal-generating plants limits the ability to keep the grid stable, reduction in rotating reserve, that could result in power outages like we have never experienced before. My experience is that coal units are restricted in load increase, decrease due to unit temperature limits. Another concern is the hydroelectric units are used to stabilize the grid and make rapid load changes, but large areas of the country are in drought, providing no water to rivers. Several years ago, I installed solar power to my home with batter backup, along with industrial-grade monitoring. I have witnessed this no load to full load many times. Solar is not the way to provide energy to the nation as we are doing today. Battery backup is good for situations that do no reduce storage below 80%. It gives full life expectancy but decreases drastically with full discharge. Batteries like solar have limits and batters are very expensive. Utilities are trying to develop smart grids. The real problem for now is a government demanding change to solar without understanding or caring about the results they demand.

James Andrews

Milledgeville