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KirkSheffler t1_itol42b wrote

Reply to comment by EscapeRich9091 in eli5: how long would power stay on if the power company abandoned their post? by larsattacks94

Solar and wind also requires techs to maintain and update regularly, usually with IT people as well to program all of the gear to do what it needs. As an electrician I could confidently say not more than 1-6m with no people at all. There’s usually constant presence or maintenance techs that rotate and keep everything up to date/ running

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EscapeRich9091 t1_itrgpcx wrote

... I did say until they break down? Either software failure, generator failure, bearing failures, blade failures, whatever it is. They will have an average unmaintained life expectancy probably on the scale of months.

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KirkSheffler t1_itrhkrb wrote

Yes but they break down a lot faster than people think. They require constant presence like any other electrical sub stations

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EscapeRich9091 t1_itrk7j5 wrote

I don't know what that unmaintained life is so I didn't address it. I'm sure somewhere they've decommissioned wind/solar/green installs and run some units into the ground to find out, but I haven't investigated to see if there's any published white papers on it.

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KirkSheffler t1_itolaij wrote

And solar doesn’t drop off in the evening, it’s all stored into batteries and converted into AC for use in homes/ businesses. It’s very rare if none exinsistant to have straight power from solar.

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EscapeRich9091 t1_itrgiul wrote

I'm talking about Grid scale Solar and residential Net Solar, not residential or commercial Solar + Li-ion. If you're off-grid with your Solar + Li-ion you don't factor into grid loading anyway, unless you have high energy processes, like an industrial facility which uses Solar + Li-ion for office power and grid for like arc furnaces or something really energy hungry.

Solar does drop off hard in the evenings, and it's a big problem they call "The Duck Curve". Go ahead and check out some of the online papers about it.

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KirkSheffler t1_itrgu8k wrote

I understand that and it’s the same concept/ principles. They have techs who monitor and rotate between the fields keeping them in order/ up and running. The company I work for ‘Faith Technologies’ is huge into green power, and we actually did the largest solar farm in the US. I’m just speaking from personal experience working on them it may be different overseas or in different regions.

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EscapeRich9091 t1_itrjvs6 wrote

As far as I know, Grid-scale li-ion (or lipo more likely) installs are super rare. A quick google says in 2021-2022 there was only 16gW of grid scale li-ion/lipo storage. Our peak usage is on the order of terawatts.

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KirkSheffler t1_itrh0ij wrote

And yes there is a huge dip at night but during the day the fields are charging battery banks not using raw solar so at night if you’re not consuming a large amount of electricity it’s fine. And the banks can usually last a while on a single charge

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