“THE DUCK CURVE”

By - Akshay avate

B.Tech(EEE) 

Central University of Karnataka 

The electricity is of vital importance to us, we expect it to be supplied to us at every point in time, nowadays we cannot afford to loos the supply of electricity for a very long time, since almost all of the work, depends on it, we turn on the switch and we need the light to glow, but for electrical engineer, it’s not a cakewalk to maintain the supply all the time. In India, a large amount of electricity is being generated using fossil fuels, but the time period until which we can depend on fossil fuels is not very far, due to its restricted presence on earth and also due to the severe fact that it plays a crucial role in the climate change, so now most of the countries are switching towards renewable energy sources, like Wind, Solar, etc. As we are evolving as more human we are understanding our ridiculous behavior towards earth as a whole, so there are people with posters and social media stories, who are drawing attention towards the serious fact of climate change, and hence governments are working on policy levels to fill the grave that we have dug for the future generation. 

As of now, solar panels are the ones who seem to take the burden squarely on their shoulders, so the government is emphasizing more on it, and what now, the problem solved? 

Umm, let’s see….. 

The need for the consumption of electricity is so dynamic in nature, because, on a very large scale cannot be very sure that when will any person will switch on the fan and hence start consuming the supply and vice-versa is also true, so here graphs come in handy, we call them as load-curve  ( consumption of energy in MW and time on 24hrs scale), load-curve can be of daily, monthly, yearly and of any geographical area which is connected to the grid

“A typical load-curve”

graph Credits: POSOCO 

A typical load curve reflects our own lifestyle, we get up in the morning and, as we start our day we start using electricity so the overall demand increases, and as we get ready and leave the home for work we are generally switching the place from where we use the supply and as we return home in the evenings the demand peaks and as we start to make our bed the appliances switch off and hence the demand decreases, and the cycle continues. 

One major task is to maintain the balance between the load and the demand  

The solar panel’s generation is at the peak from 1100hrs to 1600 hrs, and after that, the production drastically decreases because the sun starts to set. So we have to slow down the production from the other supply sources like thermal, nuclear, etc during 1100 hrs and 1600 hrs and then suddenly increase the production, to meet the demand and failing which we may disturb the entire grid and latter may face black-outs.

image credit: vox youtube channel  

The decrease in demand due to the availability of supply from the solar panels is being seen as serious since more number of solar panels mean more decrease in demand from 1100hrs and 1600hrs and then sudden sharp increase in demand, but now that increase in demand has to meet by the conventional sources, now that’s the problem and if the solar panels start producing more supply then required, intentionally we have to turn off, some of the panels, (to maintain the balance between the supply and demand), which is not economical. And the sudden increase in the production from sources like thermal is not a cake wake, since to start the thermal power plant we have need some time, but the demand cannot be kept on hold. 

image credit: vox youtube channel  

Now, this duck has to be tackled very carefully.