In coming days, we'll be talking about how to "power up" renewable energy.
Everyone's talking renewables. G8 leaders are talking about reducing CO2 emissions and increasing renewables; federal and state officials are talking about tough new renewable portfolio standards; many in the general public seem eager to embrace renewables as the only logical way to address global warming (although whether or not they are aware of the price of renewable energy remains unclear).
There's a fundamental problem, however. The one thing no one is talking about is perhaps the one thing that would make the transition to renewables work, namely energy storage.
While it's true that electricity itself cannot be stored, electricity can be stored in a different form ... after all, that's what a battery is.
The reason storage is so essential to renewables is the renewables are intermittent -- the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow, and they are often located in areas far from population centers. Because the price of wholesale electricity varies throughout the day, when electricity is sold is just as important as how much electricity is sold. But if you can store the energy generated on a sunny or windy day and then inject that energy into the grid at periods of high demand ... well, then you've got yourself a market. You've got both physical and economic control over your resource and the leverage with which to build increasing demand for your product.
So coupling bulk energy storage with renewable energy -- especially remotely located wind farms -- creates a more reliable market for the energy generated and a more attractive environment for investment. Perhaps most importantly, storage also begins to make renewably generated electricity behave, from a market and supply perspective, like electricity from baseload plants such as nuclear.
Before we expect too much from renewables and are disappointed by their failure to perform, we need to start talking about giving them the power they need to succeed. We need to be talking about storage.
Sources:
- The Energy Storage Council
- Pearl Street Power blog
- World Council for Renewable energy: "The case for energy autonomy: Storing Renewable Energies" (call for papers)
- Electricity Storage Association: papers and presentations
‘Heretic’ battles straw man
Gore on the Daily Show: extended dance remix
Comments
View as Flat
GRLCowan Posted 4:52 am
10 Jun 2007
The inefficiency would exist if electricity were used to make it, and at the destination it were used to make electricity. Electricity could conceivably be eased out of the deal at both ends.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:09 am
10 Jun 2007
Can charge an AltairNano battery to 80% in 1 minute.
http://greyfalcon.net/quickcharge3
And the 250kW AeroVironment charger provides ample current to accomplish this.
http://greyfalcon.net/quickcharge
The old EV1 for instance could pop an 80% charge in 12 minutes.
http://greyfalcon.net/quickcharge2
_____
So, it all comes down to how do we efficiently store renewable on-demand electricity on the grid.
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sunflower Posted 5:16 am
10 Jun 2007
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Nucbuddy Posted 5:22 am
10 Jun 2007
How many AltairNano batteries do you own?
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:27 am
10 Jun 2007
Don't quite see how that question is at all relevant.
Semantic quibbling at best.
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Charles Barton Posted 5:36 am
10 Jun 2007
How right you are. You could have 100% of peek demand generating capacity, and still not have a light bulb lit. Wind and solar power is going to end up being very expensive if you want to use storage to enhance avaliability on demand. Storage means you may need to go to 200% or even 300% of peek demand capacity, in order to produce the stored energy. Even then the system may ne less than 100% reliable.
Charles Barton
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Delay And Deny Posted 5:45 am
10 Jun 2007
This man in New Jersey does just that, and he uses the excess to run his vehicles.
He's completely Off The Grid:
http://www.greenoptions.com/blog/2007/03/16/man_lives_pol ...
Mike Strizki’s utility bill is zero, thanks to some creative thinking using renewable energy technologies. By using solar panels, a hydrogen fuel cell, storage tanks and an electrolyzer, he has enough electricity even on the cloudiest days. And Strizki isn’t a hermit living in the dark off of snails and rainwater, either. His 3,500 square foot house is located in central New Jersey on 12 acres, with amenities you’d see in any 21st century home, like a hot tub and big screen TV. His renewable energy system even creates hydrogen he uses to power his fuel-cell car.
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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Gar Lipow Posted 5:53 am
10 Jun 2007
Here is the bottom line on renewable electricity. If we connect a lot of different source together with a long distance grid we will need less storage -- little enough storage that we can meet our storage needs with bulk pumped storage in an ecologically sound way. Closed cycle modular pumped storage avoids most of the ecological problems with conventional dams, and we won't need a lot of them.
And by the way if we want to provide all or most power from sun and wind, we don't need "three times peak power". We need renewable capital about three times average consumption, which is a very diffent story. Wind electricity costs 3 - 6 center per kWh even with ~29%-~35% utilization. That is because there is not fuel cost, and O&M costs are so low. Fossil fuel and nuclear plants have much higher O&M than wind.
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:14 am
10 Jun 2007
"A Fish Friendly Hydroelectric Turbine gets a New Life"
Says that a conical style turbine allows for 98% fish survival rate, as they pass by it.
Considering how that was one of the big issues with dams and pumped hydro, that certainly helps.
_
One issue I've heard with retrofitting old dams is that they need to re-pass their Environmental Impact Assessment.
Which is why a lot of existing dams don't upgrade to hydropower.
This would certainly help that.
(Plus maybe some legistlation)
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/partner/story?id ...
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q= ...
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GRLCowan Posted 6:29 am
10 Jun 2007
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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Nucbuddy Posted 6:38 am
10 Jun 2007
If that is the case, why is the Denmark utility Dong Energy saying that it cannot afford to deploy windpower without a price guarantee of 18 cents per kWh?
http://gristmill.grist.org/comments/2007/5/31/23234/8204/ ...
the company felt it needed a price guarantee of DKK 1 per kWh to make the investment worthwhile.
One Danish Krone currently trades at 18 U.S. cents.
x-rates.com/d/USD/table.html
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Gar Lipow Posted 6:54 am
10 Jun 2007
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Gar Lipow Posted 7:00 am
10 Jun 2007
I'd take their word over a utility lobbying for a subsidy.
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Gar Lipow Posted 7:08 am
10 Jun 2007
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:23 am
10 Jun 2007
That said, here's some spiffy wind charts
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2617
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Charles Barton Posted 7:36 am
10 Jun 2007
Charles Barton
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Billhook Posted 7:55 am
10 Jun 2007
The article above offers this as its central argument -
when it is of course sheer nonsense, as a highschool review of the alternative energy options will amply demonstrate.
Energy storage may, perhaps, assist the commercial viability of intermittent options such as wind and solar,
but it is wholly irrelevant to geo-thermal, forest biomass, current turbines, hydro great & small, etc.
In addition to which, at what point will authors published on Gristmill start questioning just what "Renewable" means ?
Let alone the question of whether the supply of said energies has saved even a single barrel of oil so far ?
Regards,
Bill
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Nucbuddy Posted 8:06 am
10 Jun 2007
No, it does not.
Denmark pays more for retail electricity (and much of its electricity is imported, in order to subsidize the wholesale costs of its domestically-produced windpower). Denmark's wholesale costs for domestically-produced electricity (55% from coal, 21% from gas and 12% from wind) are comparable to those in other nations.
world-nuclear.org/info/inf99.html
Denmark has had a wide range of incentives for renewables and particularly wind energy, accounting for nearly one third of total wholesale electricity prices. Apart from the Purchase Obligation (PO) for renewables providing an effective subsidy, there is a further economic cost borne by power utilities and customers. When there is a drop in wind, back-up power is bought from the Nordic power pool at the going rate. Similarly, any surplus electricity is sold to the pool, though is deemed to be non-PO power. The net effect of this has been growing losses as wind capacity expanded. Official estimates put the expected losses at DKr 1.5 billion per year.
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Gar Lipow Posted 8:27 am
10 Jun 2007
Currently we know how to do sun and wind on a large scale, though one can argue about the economics. No one has demonstrated a commercial current turbine. Undeveloped hydro great and small represents a very tiny potential. There are strong limits on what we can get from sustainable biomass. Geothermal electricity we can currently tap again represents a very small number, though potential breakthroughs may change this.
As to renewable energy saving a barrel of oil. While the Alaska wind example I posted about recently, wind electricity is directly placing diesel fuel consumption.
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Nucbuddy Posted 8:30 am
10 Jun 2007
Scrolling down at this WNA link to the 2003 graph below the sentence, "A detailed study of energy economics in Finland published in mid 2000 showed that nuclear energy would be the least-cost option for new generating capacity," reveals that O&M costs in euros for various sources were: nuclear 7.2, gas 3.5, coal 7.4, and wind 10.0.
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:00 am
10 Jun 2007
How about we add the DOD/DOE budget onto the cost of Nuclear
And the global warming cost onto coal.
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Nucbuddy Posted 9:09 am
10 Jun 2007
Did someone-else mention externalities?
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Gar Lipow Posted 12:07 pm
10 Jun 2007
>Scrolling down at this WNA link to the 2003 graph below the sentence, "A detailed study of energy economics in Finland published in mid 2000 showed that nuclear energy would be the least-cost option for new generating capacity," reveals that O&M costs in euros for various sources were: nuclear 7.2, gas 3.5, coal 7.4, and wind 10.0.
Cherry Picking and from a biased source (world nuclear association).
Look at this(pdf) U.S. Department of energy study O&M costs for project built from 2,000 forward in the U.S. are about .8 cents per kWh.
In contrast, again according to the U.S. DOE, O&M (including fuel) for nuclear plants were estimated to be 1.8 cents per kWh in the U.S.
I suspect that the high figure for wind in places like Finland and Denmark is the fact that they were early adapters,and thus have older more expensive wind generaters. Older turbines not only have higher capital costs, but higher O&M costs.
I will note that it is pretty widely recognized that new utility scale wind tends to run 6 cents per kWh or less. Really, wasting our time by continuing to press a discredited point does not enhance your credibility.
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Charles Barton Posted 1:10 pm
10 Jun 2007
Charles Barton
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:42 pm
10 Jun 2007
Did someone-else mention externalities?
CharlesBarton
Advocates of wind must factor in the the costs of duplicate generation capacity, plus the cost of energy storage, in order to find the price of wind as a baseload electricity source.
Yep.
If you want to look at the "whole picture" costs, on one technology, it's only fair that you do the same for other technologies that you compare it to.
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Gar Lipow Posted 1:48 pm
10 Jun 2007
For example a column I wrote on the subject:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/3/12/63111/0928
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Nucbuddy Posted 2:08 pm
10 Jun 2007
Your link says that figure was from 2001. Nuclear production costs (O&M + fuel) have been continuously dropping. In 2006 they (famously, since the announcement in February 2007) were 1.66 cents/kWh.
thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/02/recordlow_produ.html
From 1997, nuclear production costs have been:
nei.org/index.asp?catnum=2&catid=351
nei.org/documents/U.S._Nuclear_Industry_Production_Costs.pdf
1997 2.38
1998 2.19
1999 1.98
2000 1.93
2001 1.84
2002 1.84
2003 1.80
2004 1.77
2005 1.72
Nuclear fuel-costs alone have been almost-continuously dropping (despite skyrocketing uranium prices) since 1995:
nei.org/documents/U.S._Nuclear_Industry_Fuel_Costs.pdf
nei.org/documents/Monthly%20Fuel%20Cost%20to%20U.S.%20Electric%20Utilities.pdf
1995 0.74
1996 0.66
1997 0.64
1998 0.63
1999 0.58
2000 0.54
2001 0.50
2002 0.48
2003 0.49
2004 0.48
2005 0.45
And nuclear non-fuel O&M costs have been almost-continuously dropping since 1997:
nei.org/documents/U.S._Nuclear_Industry_Non-Fuel_OM_Costs.pdf
1997 1.74
1998 1.57
1999 1.41
2000 1.39
2001 1.34
2002 1.36
2003 1.32
2004 1.29
2005 1.27
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:28 pm
10 Jun 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/30/business/bgsoho.1- ...
In this inaugural year, Strizki had to purchase his hydrogen - 19,000 cubic feet of it, at a total cost of about $2,000 - to prime his empty tanks.
According to Strizki, that's the last fuel bill he will ever have. Though he will continue to monitor the system, measuring the amount of hydrogen produced, the hydrogen should act like a natural battery bank that never dies or degrades. During the winter months, the solar panels should still provide about 60 percent of the power to the house, he said. It's then that the accumulated hydrogen will be siphoned from the storage tanks to a fuel cell, which will simply reverse the process of the electrolyzer, reconfiguring the hydrogen back to water and electricity.
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:32 pm
10 Jun 2007
Is all of this too good to be true? Well, yes, according to Howard Hayden, a solar skeptic, a nuclear-power advocate and the author of "The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won't Run the World." Hayden says he believes that Strizki could not possibly generate enough hydrogen from his solar panels to last him through the winter - particularly not without the help of the geothermal system installed back when the house was built. Hayden doubts Strizki's claim that he will generate the energy equivalent of about a gallon of gasoline in stored hydrogen a day; even if he does, Hayden says, when you allow for an efficiency loss of 50 percent, Strizki will be able to store only 17 kilowatt-hours a day. "He's not going to get enough energy out of his 10-kilowatt system" to power the house and car year round, Hayden said. "It's not going to happen."
But according to Scott Samuelsen, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine, the technology works. Samuelsen and a team of engineers fed several months of data from two conventional California homes into a computer model that simulated a solar-hydrogen system very much like Strizki's and found that it could provide enough energy for the houses throughout the year. The comparison is skewed, of course, because in the temperate Pacific climate, homes generally consume about 60 percent of what mid-Atlantic homes do, according to Department of Energy statistics. Still, the results were robust enough to prompt Samuelsen, who is characteristically measured in his statements, to declare that solar hydrogen "is the means by which residential homes will be powered in the future, and probably small-to-medium commercial buildings as well."
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:51 pm
10 Jun 2007
http://www.greyfalcon.net/hydrogen4.png
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:54 pm
10 Jun 2007
http://greyfalcon.net/hydrogen.png
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:38 pm
10 Jun 2007
Yeah... nothing really new to Grister's I guess.
So it's really a question of whether we go green, or we glow green :P
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:39 pm
10 Jun 2007
Yes, the vast worldwide audience of "greyfalcon.net" and its assorted rants is surely in agreement.
However, science, industry and government are moving towards the 21st Century Hydrogen Economy.
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:40 pm
10 Jun 2007
...yes, B-A-T-T-E-R-I-E-S
Of course they would fear hydrogen, the renewable energy that delivers the highest energy per unit weight.
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:49 pm
10 Jun 2007
http://greyfalcon.net/hydrogen
(Note, they still like fuel cells, just not mobile ones)
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Nucbuddy Posted 6:15 pm
10 Jun 2007
Yeah... nothing really new to Grister's I guess.
youtube.com/watch?v=1TCbl3bpPvY
So it's really a question of whether we go green, or we glow green
The description of that video says:
Added: June 10, 2007
From: peakmoment Provided By: peakmoment
Peak Moment 63: Hot topics from Richard Heinberg: record-high U.S. fuel prices; the ethanol big-business boondoggle; coal projected to peak about a hundred years early (around 2020); what the climate change discussion is missing; and enjoying ourselves as we "go local." [www.richardheinberg.com]
At 14:49 in that video, Richard Heinberg says, "Uranium supplies [are] also going to peak well-before 2050, even in the best-case scenario."
How long, GreyFlcn, do you figure it would take for human society -- at its present power-consumption level -- to burn through 1% of the ~40 trillion tons of uranium in the crust?
theoildrum.com/node/2472#comment-181500
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Whiskerfish Posted 6:22 pm
10 Jun 2007
Whiskerfish
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:48 pm
10 Jun 2007
Assuming no reprocessing even if we did run out of Uranium they'd just switch to Thorium anyways.
And yes, even if the fuel cost shot up a couple hundred percent it wouldn't make much difference.
Running out of various forms of Uranium isn't really the reason why I take issue with Nuclear.
The reason I take issue is mainly because it would speed proliferation, and even though it does come in pretty big chunks, the ability for it to scale rapidly, safely, with ready access to cooling resources just isn't there.
Mainly I think the oppourtunity cost just isn't there as compared to ample renewables. (Which in the worst case scenario all we'd have to do is create an excess of capacity and use shunts)
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amazingdrx Posted 10:54 pm
10 Jun 2007
First reduce heating and cooling needs way down, for refrigeration, cooking, and air conditioning, the really big kwh guzzlers.
When the wind blows hard or the sun shines use heat pumps or direct circulation to ground heat sink to store refrigeration as frozen salt water. Home air conditioning coolness is already stored in the ground, simple circulation will do that job.
Cooking heat can be stored with molten wax. And home heating and hot water storage stored with phase change salt solutions like sodium sulfate decahydrate.
What is left to feed on kwh? lighting, computers, teevees, and appliaces are all available in super efficient versions.
If power use is very low, batteries will be cost effective.
the goal of powering a home and plugin car as well from a home power system (disconnected from the grid) is attainable at a reasonable cost with a 5 to 10 year payback period without subsidies. I believe it, but can't prove it..yet.
Given a large enough grid with various inputs of biogas, wind, solar, and water power, storage might be a completely moot point though.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 10:58 pm
10 Jun 2007
Capacitors and superconducting energy storage systems store electricity directly. A 500 KVDC grid that used nanotech capacitors or superconducting storage would do the job. But at what cost? Mass production efficiency might bring them within reach economically.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Rune Posted 4:16 am
11 Jun 2007
The fact is, the most hyped sources of cleaner current energy (as opposed to dirtier, ancient, stored in the ground sources) make up a tiny fraction of 1% of world energy sources. Even if we can grow the clean and new energy sources as quickly as we were able to scale up the simpler tasks of pumping and digging vast stores of fuel out of the ground, which, so far, we can't, it is going to take the better part of a century to get close to where we are today in terms of energy demand. And so long as that demand grows at a modest 1% per year, the increase in the quantity of energy demanded will dwarf the new energy coming online at current 30% to 80% growth rates--rates that are very difficult to sustain, by the way.
Some day, probably after all of us are dead and the population as a whole has declined enough to reduce energy demand for that reason alone, cleaner, current energy conversion and use may be the answer to most energy needs. But for right now, with the capabilities and cost structures we really face when we go about reducing the amount of GHG and toxins we put into our air and water when we light up our world, heat and cool our buildings, and do some work, efficiency and conservation measures beat the crap out of the potential to make a dent in the problem with new energy sources. To put it in perspective, a mere 1% decrease in what would otherwise have been the level of this year's energy demand trumps all of the wind and solar generation installed over the past few decades many times over.
What this means to energy storage is that efficiency is critically important because it provides a way of balancing peak loads and peak generation from the energy sources most of us will use for most of our energy needs for most of our lives. If we can keep dirty peaker plants offline, and maybe retire some other older plants, by storing the excess generation capacity of cleaner plants, we will be able to do more good in the next decade or two than all of the wind and solar we can even hope to see during that period. And, of course, what we learn about efficient and less expensive storage will eventually pay enough benefits to worry about when cleaner and more current energy sources eventually scale up decades from now.
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amazingdrx Posted 6:17 am
11 Jun 2007
It's only a challenge... from a design and business perspective. So what's the problem, without challenge life would be boring.
Tackle these problems and come on in for the win with us. Big fossil corporate governance has an ass kicking coming, and they are going to get it. From small business building out distribuited renewable generation and storage.
Say ghoodbye to all that loot you oily pirates. Arrrrhh.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Septimus Posted 6:23 am
11 Jun 2007
Compressed Air Energy Storage-CAES(Bulk) Plus Wind can now provide Load following,Voltage Regulation, Frequency control,Grid support, Spinning reserve,VaR control etc. and reduce thermal plant cycling( that is the extra capacity that must be available when the wind velocities drop)
Installing a 300 MW CAES plant vs. 3 x 100MW open cycle Gas Turbines or a Combined Cycle plant for better fuel utilization is a costly proposition and does nothing to "extend" the WTG capacity.
Wind as renewable source of energy will continue to grow here in the USA and is a resource to look upon favourably--Storage can really bring WTG's into the Baseload Market, reduce C02 emissions, and bring increased "green" power to the market.
'Run of the River' hydro plant which avoids new dams can also benefit from Bulk Storage, as the night time generation(rather than shutting down)can now fall into the same benefit profile outlined earlier.
Septimus van der Linden.
Gas Turbine and Emerging Technologies.
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Charles Barton Posted 6:28 am
11 Jun 2007
It is inexcusable for someone who bills himself an an expert to know so little about energy. Generation IV reactors are expected to use Thorium rather than Uranium for breeding purposes. Thorium is 4 times as plentiful as Uranium in the Earth's crust. Sigh. This guy is a blithering idiot who needs to take a Freshman course on energy resources.
Charles Barton
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:49 am
12 Jun 2007
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=22558&hed=Po ...
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