The damage being caused by wind turbines and solar power plants is not generally recognized and accounted for.
Mostly because it’s hidden from view.
Many people are now aware that wind and solar power plants produce electricity intermittently, and that natural gas power plants must be kept spinning, in reserve, to replace, on a moment’s notice, the power lost when the wind stops blowing or the sun stops shining.
Keeping natural gas power plants spinning and ready to go on-line costs money, and produces emissions unnecessarily.
What’s not generally recognized is that coal-fired power plants are now being asked to follow the load, something they were not designed to do.
Boilers are designed for steady operation as base load power plants, not for variable operation with shifting loads. Load following is what gas turbines are best suited for.
Load following requires boilers to operate at various temperatures, and these varying temperatures create stresses that cause considerable damage.
This problem will become worse as Obama’s Clean Power Plan is implemented, where coal-fired power plants will be required to be used for load following.
Load following can cause low-load, hot startup, warm startup, and/or cold startup situations.
Each of these conditions places unusual stress on boilers and their components.
These stresses lead to failures, that cost money, and which can cause unexpected additional problems in keeping the grid operating.
Low load requires the boiler to operate at well below design parameters. These conditions cause temperature variations within the boiler due to low water and steam flows, and also result in the boiler operating at lower efficiencies, which costs money and produces more emissions.
Hot startups occur when the boiler is shut down and then restarted. Warm start-ups occur when the boiler is shut down over the weekend when loads are lower, and then restarted on Monday morning.
Boilers are designed to operate steadily, and not for repeated starting and stopping, or for running at various loads.
Boilers are built using different materials and materials of differing thicknesses.
Different materials expand at different rates. These differences in the rate of expansion cause each material to expand differently creating stresses in each material, especially in the joints, such as with welds.
Components that operate at high temperatures, such as super heater tubes, are damaged by heat induced stresses known as thermal fatigue.
The relative movement between materials creates stresses that can lead to failure.
- Headers in boilers are thick, expensive and hard to reach components that have been cracked as the result of thermal cycling.
- The boiler structure that supports firewalls and water-tubes expands and contracts at different rates than the firewalls, etc. This uneven expansion and contraction causes severe damage to the firewalls and tubing.
- Steam turbine rotors consist of huge, solid forgings. These rotors, unless designed for thermal cycling, must be brought up to speed slowly so as not to be deformed by changing temperature. The coefficients of expansion between components are also different, which requires steady operating temperatures under load. Clearances are tight and deformation could cause rubbing and damage.
When the boiler is required to quickly increase its output when the load increases, over-firing will occur causing components to operate at temperatures higher than for which they were designed.
The tallest building with conveyor belt leading to it, is the boiler.
It’s also more difficult to maintain water chemistry when the boiler is operated in load following mode. Operating the boiler with water oxygen content and pH values beyond normal can result in boiler tube failures.
These are a few of the adverse conditions created by requiring boilers to operate as load following rather than base load power plants.
With the government forcing the adoption of wind farms and solar power plants to cut CO2 emissions, costs are being increased and reliability is being reduced. Load following exacerbates cost increases and reliability problems.
Watch for my new book, which will be available in January.
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