Thursday, February 24, 2011

Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority

I am really wondering what effect the need for spinning reserve in the Snowy Hydro scheme is affecting water flow. Spinning Reserve defined here http://tinyurl.com/473a3sd. Also wondering whether this whole control of our Murray Darling headwaters is even considered by the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

4 comments:

Andrew Gregson said...

In Australia the process is known as Syn Con. As your Wikipedia link describes, the process is required to ensure stability of the electrical grid (which must be between 48 and 52 hertz). Snowy Hydro regularly operate in this made and are paid for the service for the national market operator (NEMCO) to do so. Importantly for your question, though, they don't use water to do it. They use compressed air to turn the turbines at a much lower output to provide this service.

Even if they were using water, it would be at one of their higher level dams and hence it wouldn't be released from the scheme.

JimBob51 said...

Andrew thank you so much for your very informative comment. I will ensure that this is passed on to people whom question this.

Murfomurf said...

OK- sounds well-engineered and water-conservation minded. Energy? Never knew they had to keep things going at a low ebb to even out current. Incidentally- what happens to the chopped off sinusoidal bits of AC in our system- are they used for power or waste heat?

Andrew Gregson said...

With respect to another comment, T3 can only pump back up one level. It can't pump back to long term storage in Eumcumbene.