Bob Ammerman wrote:
> Hydro plants can be surprisingly fast to respond. I developed the
> control software that ran the Niagara Falls power plant (Robert Moses
> plant) in the mid eighties. That plant, which generates about 2.5GW
> was able to raise or lower its output some hundreds of MW in the
> matter of a few seconds.

That makes sense since it's basically operating a valve.  However, I've seen
charts describing how fast different types of plants can change their
output, and hydro was reasonably quick but not down to the 4 second
requirement for "instant".  Maybe different plants vary, although you'd
think that if Niagara Falls can do it everyone else can too.  The slowest
plant type is nuclear.

Perhaps the issue is to not just change output, but to do it efficiently.


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