Connecting Solar to the Grid is Harder Than You Think
A lot of the interesting challenges with renewables are happening behind the scenes. Get Nebula using my link for 40% off an …
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"Harmony in Every Heartbeat
January 10, 2025
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Sooooo, more nuclear power, less inverter based tech?
Watching the windmills, it made me wonder if there are underwater ones that make use of the ocean currents…
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I really like your YouTube channel thanks for making it. I have learned a lot about how the world right in front of me works. And it is cool to have some context of where I fit in at my new job as a first year electrical apprentice
Hi Grady, momentum not inertia. Many people are not aware of the difference.
I think now that fusion is becoming more prevalent. The status quo of the grid may need to be totally changed.
Im not aware of whether the labs working on it have mentioned yet whether itll produce AC/DC power, but the priority should be to make a grid capable of carrying fusion energy as simply as possible. No conversion, no loss. If it makes DC power, than we need to convert to a DC grid.
Say goodbye to the cheap equipment you mentioned at the beginning, everything else would simply have to fall in line.
13:06 or have customers who are willing to go of supply for a while.
Here in the uk many large users like cold stores and pumping stations etc have frequency responce relays that disconect at a given frequence.
So for example a cold store may be set to disconect for 20 minutes if the frequency ever drops below say 49.75hz
A watter pumping station may go on to backup generator for 30 minutes if the frequence drops below 49.70hz
by the time they are comming back on other standby generation will have spun up.
Great video and explanation
Stands ro reason that traditionally there are thousand of tones of heavy alternators. Wizzing round with loads of inertia. Shut down the steam plant and there is no inertia ergo when there is a sudden surge the inverters will treat it as a fault and trip. Basic physics !
No doubt the "grid" is complicated. Going to a on grid professionally installed is very expensive. I think it's a scam. Doesn't provide energy when you provider fails. Also the provider has the final say if you can or even will be able to operate one. They might be able to charge your account feel good fees for the opportunity to participate in the generation. The grid is aging, it's a fact as usage is increasing, the power company generation will not be able to keep up from your provider. You should seriously think about going off grid with the solar for you're own usage. Money, math, will power and mostly components is all it takes. Be one of the few when the grid fails to have the lights on and comfortable in your home off grid.
This is part of the reason why I think nuclear is a good option for now until we figure out and establish systems for more reliable power storage and infrastructure with renewables.
Makes you appreciate electricity as a consumer. California has a useful ISO app showing demand v. capacity. The majority of the grid is solar during the day. I would like to see a show of battery farms. Another topic would be how sky link communications work.
I noticed about a year ago that the digital clock in my stove and the one in my microwave were both about a minute and a half slow. Must have been a big frewuency drop to do that.
Instead of "grid following" inverters, anything pushing power into the grid surely just has to sync its PLL to a local clock which causes the output wave to lead the grid if the frequency drops.
We are in growing pains stage? Your a real asshat. Germany has already wasted a trillion dollars on 150 gigawatts of wind and solar. They have destroyed the economics of their grid. Growing pains? Piss off
Or we could do nuclear power like anyone with a brain would do 😂
Fantastic videos. Interesting and really well written and presented. Thank you so much for such high quality (especially compared with the growing AI garbage.)
so good
The conservative party in Australia base their entire identity on "oh nos! Wind and solar inverters are less reliable than coal fire plants that have had hundreds of years of development! We need to ban them and put even more money into our friends in the coal industry that have supported us so generously in their campaign assistance!"
Meanwhile anyone with a quarter of a brain realises these problems are easily fixable and aren't nearly as frequent nor catastrophic as the outages our aging coal and gas infrastructure routinely suffer.
It's a pity the population are so gullible.
Super informative. Thank you
What is Nebula online's Taboo onscreen? That looks like a drag queen in your screenshot. If so, that is a HARD PASS!
More solar power 🇺🇸
As a college student studying EE, it feels weird watching a youtube video about stuff that I am literally taking a class on right now. 😂
Does this mean renewables have to have reliable base load power to work? Regards Alastair Gair
President Harris needs to close all smoke belching electric power plants by 2035.
I have a small offgrid solar setup on my house for emergencies , 800w and two 100ah batteries, the price of batteries and solar panels is very low at moment but once the presidential elections are over, expect tariffs and the prices to climb, if you have any interest in this kind of stuff, now is the chance to get in while prices are cheap
Why not remain off grid permanently
Appalling sound quality. Get a better microphone.
I fail to understand why ANYONE would want to grid tie their solar.
Frequency stability will be achieved when all power inverters are synchronized to an atomic clock WWVB. When generators and power inverters are synchronized to an atomic clock WWVB WWVH and WWV you will have grid stability. Homes connected to the power grid when power failure happens homes will still have electricity.
Talk about fixing what's not broken. Natural gas is better. Renewable energy is horrible for the planet. The mining required for the rare earth minerals is an environmental crime.
Everything was hard before it was first done. We put a man on the moon 55 years ago and tech is only ramping up exponentially. Sounds like big oil/coal BS to me.
Now you tell us!
If you have bidirectional metering, it's also easier than you think to hook up microinverted power to your house. You don't even need a special breaker, let alone a centralized control box, for it to function.
The goal should be to make every household as much independent as possible; insofar as power generation is concerned.. Connecting to the grid, selling the surplus power back to the grid could become secondary goals
This problem is why Dutch base load plants are running no matter the amount of unreliable wind&solar those ignorant politicians force in to our grid.
I love this channel, but I hate clickbait titles that try to tell me what I think. I know what I think, and it's not what you think I think. Be plain and explain yourself.
For the environmental cause, talk is cheap, just do it!
I'm harder than you think.
And we wonder why energy costs keep rising all this technology is expensive.
The wind is killing the Birds!!!! lol
we run 50hz machines not designed for 60hz at 60hz and texas loses 2.5GW of power when the frequency drops to 59.7hz
Weather based power supplies are inherently unreliable. Trying to mitigate that unreliability is why it takes government mandates to deploy them. Absent hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, all these projects would be bankrupt.
I don't see why a software engineer couldn't write a program to keep solar online during an outage. Whatever information about the frequency the main stations have could be transmitted to the affected power station in real time to give it the information it needs to stay in step with the rest of the grid, couldn't it? I think there's something I'm missing.
Love your content. "This inverter would let out the magic smoke" hahaha