Greetings all! It was a great day today and while running I decided I'd embellish on my post from yesterday a little bit, this will probably be a two part post to keep it short.
Yesterday I mentioned that the positioning of the solar plant in southern maryland was in a great position to support the high voltage distribution system by providing electrical energy during peak hours in the summer. By that I mean there is a high degree of correlation, yes correlation is not causation, but I'll dig up the analysis i have from previous work if necessary, to high temperatures and increased electrical usage. Specifically in summer months when both the sun is intense and the heat is as well, everyone has heard of brownouts, and that is the cause. The solar plants location would thus allow it to act as an electrical support structure, inline, that helps the source power plant absorb the excess load during that time.
To support that I did a little internet searching to find the actual map of the maryland transmission line system. The link will take you to the source, but the modified version shown below shows the solar plant location, outlined in blue.
The location is approximate, mainly b/c this is a cartoon map vs georeferenced, but gives the key points needed. The solar plant is right near a gas fired plant located on the St Mary's side of the patuxent river(the black dot at the bottom of the circle) which then drives to a substation in hughsville. The maroon lines are from the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant, primarily wired to feed the DC metro area. I drew in the arrows, showing the support directions, missing the one line leading to Southern Maryland.
There is one line missing, a 115kV line, I believe based upon counting the line isolators on the lines I run by, running to the Patuxent River Naval Base, but it may be a smaller line and I'll check that this week. This is the line that will generate the most support, other than the segment running towards the coal plant on the east side of the Potomac, where rte 301 crosses the river, primarily because the other lines are all double structured with dual generation sources, indicating a built in redundancy.
So in summary, the plant is in a great location, will help the grid in southern maryland a lot b/c we do summer brown outs on hot days, and rate limiting when necessary. In the long run this should lower costs for energy as well, once the plant is paid off, b/c of the extreme increases in the $ per kWh in the summer months as part two of this post.
Since I got going on the grid a little bit, the next post will talk a little about the US distribution grid, which will probably be a few posts as well.
Yesterday I mentioned that the positioning of the solar plant in southern maryland was in a great position to support the high voltage distribution system by providing electrical energy during peak hours in the summer. By that I mean there is a high degree of correlation, yes correlation is not causation, but I'll dig up the analysis i have from previous work if necessary, to high temperatures and increased electrical usage. Specifically in summer months when both the sun is intense and the heat is as well, everyone has heard of brownouts, and that is the cause. The solar plants location would thus allow it to act as an electrical support structure, inline, that helps the source power plant absorb the excess load during that time.
To support that I did a little internet searching to find the actual map of the maryland transmission line system. The link will take you to the source, but the modified version shown below shows the solar plant location, outlined in blue.
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| Maryland HV Distribution Lines > 115kV |
There is one line missing, a 115kV line, I believe based upon counting the line isolators on the lines I run by, running to the Patuxent River Naval Base, but it may be a smaller line and I'll check that this week. This is the line that will generate the most support, other than the segment running towards the coal plant on the east side of the Potomac, where rte 301 crosses the river, primarily because the other lines are all double structured with dual generation sources, indicating a built in redundancy.
So in summary, the plant is in a great location, will help the grid in southern maryland a lot b/c we do summer brown outs on hot days, and rate limiting when necessary. In the long run this should lower costs for energy as well, once the plant is paid off, b/c of the extreme increases in the $ per kWh in the summer months as part two of this post.
Since I got going on the grid a little bit, the next post will talk a little about the US distribution grid, which will probably be a few posts as well.
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