The great question about wind is intermittency, and the great answer is energy storage. There are a number of energy storage technologies out there; I suspect the right storage mechanism will differ from region to region.
One of the most interesting storage options out there is pumped hydro. The concept is pretty simple: you build two reservoirs, one down low and one up high, connected by a pipe. In the pipe are energy-generating turbines. When you're getting excess wind power, you can use it to pump water up to the top reservoir. When you're not getting enough, you can drop water down the pipe through the turbines. This is, in effect, a kind of energy shock absorber. It buffers and stabilizes the energy from wind.
For a simple and compelling introduction -- arguing for the inclusion of pumped storage in a canal restoration project in Montana -- see this great editorial by Montana Public Service Commission member Ken Toole.
The Wind Kids: How high school students helped bring a wind farm to Milford, Utah
One doctor’s quest to sound the alarm on ‘wind turbine syndrome’
Comments
View as Flat
GreyFlcn Posted 6:19 pm
04 Jun 2007
Since if it is, then we have plenty of existing dams.
But their power is horded for it's valuable superpeak usage.
Hydro in general, from a raw dispatchability performance standpoint kicks ass.
If all you had to do was build a second resivoir, and pump it occasionally back up to the top, that might help.
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:23 pm
04 Jun 2007
Particularly if they operated off of AC power, and didn't use expensive physical magnets.
Hrmmmm...where could we get something like that.
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DogsCatsAndStrays Posted 11:04 pm
04 Jun 2007
1. The on-peak MW's are the most valuable
2. Hydro power has the fastest ramp rate, you can start and stop hydro-power without having to fire boilers or do any type of warm-up.
With every hydro project there are a series of restrictions, minimum water flows, maximum and minimum lake heights, maximum flows etc. but within the boundaries the objective is peak generation.
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DonnClark Posted 11:16 pm
04 Jun 2007
Curious as to calculations of the efficiency of the system, which I 'assume' are above most eneergy systmes. Anyone have the figures?
Second curiosity: Does anyone know if a central site exists or is planned that can be used to calculate the carbon cost of both (or at least one) construction projects and the manufacturing of specific items? I would like to know the comparative carbon costs of a concrete structure (complete, including mining of raw materials through placement and finishing) to a steel structure (also including all contributing factors).
I would also like to compare the total carbon cost of various types of energy producing installations, such as solar, wind, coal, hydro-electric, nuclear, etc., ... separate from the energy porduction phase ... simple from there, to calculate the expected life of the energy production plant and the carbon cost during production to see which systems ultimately become neutral ... and of course, those that never do.
Thanks,
Donn Clark
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spaceshaper Posted 11:40 pm
04 Jun 2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectric ...
An interesting footnote to this article:
"A new concept in pumped-storage is utilising wind energy to pump water. A setup of wind turbines that direct drive water pumps or an 'Energy Storing Wind Dam' can make this a more efficient process."
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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Whiskerfish Posted 1:21 am
05 Jun 2007
The pumped storage schemes I know of in South Africa have both wrecked substantial acreages of highly species-diverse habitat.
Whiskerfish
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GreyFlcn Posted 1:37 am
05 Jun 2007
Sadly, this is the lesser evil on that category.
For instance deforresting the Brazilian Amazon, or clearing the Brazilian Cerrado.
Or just in general sticking with the status quo and using coal.
Also last I checked, the equatorial region of Africa is one large area where biofuel companies are speculating.
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Gar Lipow Posted 1:44 am
05 Jun 2007
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amazingdrx Posted 2:09 am
05 Jun 2007
It also restores aquifers to have that much water around. Some scheme to recover and store flood waters is sorely needed. This could be integrated with the pumped hydro energy storage.
I favor shunting flood waters into wetlands myself. The pumped hydro storage water could be taken from those wetlands and returned.
This could be a huge benefit in terms of GHG, by replacing fossil generation with renewables backed by pumped hydro storage. And in terms of water conservation.
We are at crisis stage already on drought problems from GHG disaster, water shortage is already threatening economic growth. Australia's more extreme problems are a warning.
Many of these various energy solutions seem to fit symbiotically with other environmental solutions. Such as prairie restoration, wind power, carbon sequestration by prairie soil, and biomass energy sources to supplement renewables.
Maybe our representaticves will start listening to us more closely if we come up with better coordinated solutions like this. It's worth a try.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 2:16 am
05 Jun 2007
Something to consider where high wind areas would coincide with large wetland resevoir areas like on the great plains. The plains some have huge lakes. And a lot of wetlands on the edges.
This stuff is a conservationist's dream. Teddy Roosevelt is probably smiling down from a national park in heaven at efforts like this right now. That's gotta be a positive karmic effect, hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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JMG Posted 2:41 am
05 Jun 2007
Not to mention that dams are essentially "bass-o-matic" devices for denuding rivers of salmon.
Why would we insist on using water, a precious, scarce, but bulky and chemically active substance, as an energy storage medium, when there are so many more obvious alternatives?
Encapsulated depleted uranium springs to mind immediately--rather than letting the military release tons of it into the atmosphere via weaponry, why not encapsulate it in concrete and elevate these superheavy cylinders in generating towers located right next to the windfarms they serve? Wire up the local grid so that whenever the wind turbines are producing excess power, it is shunted over to help elevate the weights; whenever the grid wants more power than the turbines are producing, the weights come down, spinning the motor-generator that lifted them up in the "generate" mode.
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Gar Lipow Posted 3:58 am
05 Jun 2007
In terms of water use: minimize that problem too, by using closed cycle artificial reservoirs. That is create both upper and lower reservoir in a place where none already exists (at with at least an 800 foot drop in between them). Seal them to minimize leakage. Since you are not pumping out of and dropping into a natural river or late, you minimize harm to water life. You are recyling the same water over and over, with replacement needed only to compensate for evaporation and leakage. (You could minimize evaporation with covers, but given the water to power consumption ratio we are talking about , replacing water lost to evaporation might be cheaper.)
Umm in termes of encapsulated depleted uranium or ball bearing or whatever -- not something turbines can tap as easily as water, much more friction , much less efficient energy storage, much more costly in capital costs. And if we used closed cycle pumped storage rather using natural rivers and lakes as reservoirs, water use is small compared to existing plants. (Fossil fuel processing is a water intensive process.).
Closed cycle pumped storage with both reservoirs being artificial would be more expensive than conventional pumped storage, possibly up to double the cost, which is still cheaper than next least expensive storage means. If you use covers to minimize evaporation (which you would need to in desert climates) it might reach 2.5 times the cost of conventional storage (though I suspect I'm overestmating this cost by a lot). That would put costs at $25 per kWh of capacity ,with the ability to handle and unlimited number of cycles. No other storage means comes close to that in price. $50 per kWh with a 10,000 cycle capacity is a wet dream in other storage means right now; it could be a decade before we see that. Pumped storage is the only reasonably priced storage means we have right now. The next least expensive available today are VRB flow batteries, which in large sizes in large quantities the company thinks could be supplied as cheaply as $300 per kWh. (Though the lowest price they currently are offering at is $350 per kWh. )
If pumped storage is intolerable it is intolerable. But I hope nobody dismisses it too quickly without considering simple improvements that can lower its ecological cost, and without considering the alternatives. We can reduce our lifestyles, be more efficient, but unless you want to give up electricity entirely, sustainable electricity requires use of either variable or capital intensive sources -- which both need storage.
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Gar Lipow Posted 4:39 am
05 Jun 2007
http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/hydro.html
You avoid problems with wildlife, water use. And because you are using the same water over and over again, you are not constantly adding new organic matter. Thus the whole methane problem can be avoided. You can use anywhere you have the elevation -- old gravel pits, old mines.
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JMG Posted 5:26 am
05 Jun 2007
Got a pointer for those comments? I'm not sure you're wrong (or right) -- but I sure would like to see some data.
Where the winds are best ain't where the hills are; how many 800' drops are there in North and South Dakota, Montana etc? Sure, there are mountains here and there, but I don't know anyone who proposes siting windfarms there. From what I read, the windfarms are for the great flat plains, so I would be interested in reading more about the costs of various energy storage schemes for smoothing out wind variability.
Also, having worked with turbines and piping a fair amount, I'm especially interested in your comment that there's "more friction" involved with a mechanical deadweight drop system than with pumps/valves/piping/ turbines and your comment that a deadweight provides "much less energy efficient storage."
Given that a wind turbine already provides a tall central tower, it seems that it should be possible to reduce the elevation gain needed to get effective storage down to something less than the height of the turbines by using a denser "storage medium." There may be losses in a direct mechanical coupling, but on the other hand having each turbine store unused output is consistent with the small-is-profitable model that Lovins advocates (rather than building a big separate pumped storage installation).
Just thinking out loud now, I imagine it might even be possible to really gain some overall efficiency by having identical turbo-generators at the top and bottom of each tower---the top one is bladed and is driven by wind; the bottom one is unbladed and is wired as a motor-generator; where the blade coupling is (when installed in the upper position) gets instead a direct mechanical coupling to a lift system to suspended weight(s). When top turbine makes too much power, excess fed to bottom turbine, which lifts the weights; when top turbine not making power, weights drive bottom turbine as makeup power source.
Maybe the best part is that this provides a ready spare for problems with the top turbine, the one that actually harvests wind energy. If the top turbo-gen set craps out, you unbolt connection to the blades, unbolt the bottom gen set, and swap them, letting you run for a while in generate only mode (no storage) until you can fix the one in the bottom position and get the storage back on line.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Gar Lipow Posted 7:14 am
05 Jun 2007
In terms of placing ball bearings (or whatever on top wind towers) I don't think you have a feel for the scale mechanical electricity provides. Aa 80 meter won't even provide the "head" for ten kWh of storage. In is elementary physics. I leave you to do the math.
In terms of cost: water is a lot less expensive per pound than depleted uranium, especially after you mill it into spheres. (friction is even higher if you don't mill it into spheres, cause then you are dumping gravel.) You think a cubic foot of milled sphere is going to be less expensive that a cubic foot of water?
In terms of friction: Marbles are going spend a lot of energy hitting one another, and you have a lot of friction each time one marble hits another. With water most friction is the surface of the water hitting the pipe. (Water has very low vicosity.) If you think a buch of marbles as a pseudo fluid, you can also think of them as a high viscosity fluid.
Here are some links to some basic physics on this:
http://www.rwc.uc.edu/koehler/biophys/3b.html
http://www.phptr.com/articles/article.asp?p=349046&rl ...
Here is a simple experiment you can do for yourself. Set up a pipe and a walled ramp of the same length at the same angle. Make them at least couple of feet long. Release a marble onto the ramp at the same time you release water into the pipe. Observe the difference between the time in takes the marble to roll down the ramp and the time it takes the water to flow through the pipe.
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JMG Posted 8:02 am
05 Jun 2007
Moreover, given the foundation requirements for new generation monster wind turbines, a little careful planning might give you another 20 m (80 m tower + 20 m foundation wells).
From wikipedia:
DU is considered both a toxic and radioactive hazard that requires long term storage as low level nuclear waste. DU is relatively expensive to store but relatively inexpensive to produce or obtain. Generally the only real costs are those associated with conversion of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) to metal. DU is extremely dense, 67% denser than lead, only slightly less than tungsten and gold, and just 16% less dense than osmium or iridium, the densest naturally occurring substances known. Its low cost makes it attractive for a variety of industrial and military uses. However, the material is prone to corrosion and small particles are pyrophoric. [7]
...
World Depleted Uranium Inventory
Country Organization DU Stocks (in tonnes) Reported
United States DOE 480,000 2002
FAEA 460,000 1996
COGEMA 190,000 2001
United Kingdom BNFL 30,000 2001
...
TOTAL 1,188,273 2002
Moreover, we're making more of it all the time. In other words, we've got a product of our energy system that, with a little care in packaging and handling, would serve fairly nicely as an energy storage medium for intermittent power sources.
You seem to be postulating some other kind of system that I can't fathom entirely, which seems (by the links you posted) to involve trying to get solids to flow. I can see why you think that seems ludicrous.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Gar Lipow Posted 8:40 am
05 Jun 2007
We need to stop making more DU.
And "using it" does not make sense as a way to dispose of it -- it seems to guarantee people will come in contact with. I admit your proposal is preferable to making it bullets and tank armor which is what we do with it now. But I don't think it is a serious energy storage proposal even if intended as such.
It is one of those technotoys you criticize, but rather worse because it is a proposal without a working prototype, without a simulation, without even back of the napkin calculation about friction and efficiency.
I'm not going to do the calculations to rebut it. If you think it is a good proposal you do the calculations to support it. I will say that one thing we ought to do with DU is stop friggin making more of it. Beyond that I am a long term opponent of "disposing" of DU by making industrial use of it. It needs to be stored far from human habitation. Yes you do have breathe or eat it or drink it, or get some on your skin or in hour your clothes for it hurt you, but transporting it all over the place and then using it in industrial facilities where people congregate is a good way to ensure that happens. And if some of it gets on the ground or in the water table....
DU is one of the lesser crimes we are committing against the people of Iraq -- at least in immediate effect. But I suspect over the long run all the DU shells and other forms of DU we've left lying all over Iraq won't seem so minor. It is something I oppose doing to Iraqis and something I don't want done to me either.
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SustainableGreen Posted 9:43 am
05 Jun 2007
Geezus Loooeeezzus, this sounds like another extremely capital-intensive, habitat-destructive, Rube Goldberg invention. Sometimes I just want to shout, in the words of John McEnroe, "You can't be serious!"
One of the first problems has already been pointed out, it which I'll add one. Many areas of the country simple don't have the topographic relief to provide the head needed for cost effectiveness of hydropower. Many other areas don't have the water. So 'spreading them around' does not hold water.
Another issue has to do with constructing not one but 2 reservoirs?! 2, count 'em, 2 locations, where the existing terrestrial riverine habitat is utterly gone? Ignoring disturbance for pipeline construction/maintenance? And if you appropriate existing natural bodies of water, the native biodiversity will simply NOT tolerate repeated emptying and filling. Whether it is diurnal or seasonal or between windy periods, wetlands especially would probably turn into biological wastelands. An awful lot of Carbon capture would be gone, reversing any hope of net Carbon reduction. Only if it is a constructed wetland, with no expectation of any useful biotic value, would be valid to use such a system.
In fact, despite the huge capital required, the only thing that make any sense is the artificial modular setup. But, I cannot see how 2 otherwise useless vessels large enough to be cost effective could be found.
This sounds like a grandiose, hubris-laden bio-geo-morphological engineering way to piss millions of $ away.
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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JMG Posted 9:58 am
05 Jun 2007
But, as you say, the only way to know is to put it together on a spreadsheet. I'll work on that, though I have a big project that I'm putting together, so it may not be until August that I'm able to do more than spin ideas around.
Meanwhile, in case anyone else cares, here's why I think it might be worth pursuing the concept (or at least worthy of more rigorous disproof):
1) I'm not too sure that the capital + operating costs come out in favor of pumped storage, especially if the cost of land is included and the opportunity cost of land is included again every year. The integral energy storage system I'm imagining does not take up a lot more land than the wind machine itself, and it uses the same output distribution network rather than requiring that a new system be built to transfer power to a pumped storage facility.
2) Pumped storage involves putting some major, major pieces of capital equipment to work only some of the time, a recipe for high-cost per unit throughput. A second turbo-generator per wind tower provides a ready spare for the wind harvester (the profit end of the thing) with a fairly small machine that is pretty much always going to be in use (either storing energy or releasing it).
3) Reliability: as St. Lovins teaches us, many small units has a net system benefit compared to equivalent big lumps of power. The size of a big pumped storage unit means that it starts to present the same vulnerabilities as any other big power source -- a single fault (earthquake/fire/ terrorism etc.) disables a big chunk of power.
4) The only way to stop making DU is to stop enriching uranium, which means to stop using it. Even if the civilian world was ready to do that, I know the Navy is not. Nor am I certain that the accelerating climate crisis permits us to do so.
And if you agree that we are going to keep making it, then NOT using it seems worse than using it--the use I have proposed, were it to pencil out, would mean that wind systems would be that much more practical/reliable/affordable, and it would mean that we would be following McDonough's rule of making "waste" into useful "food" for other systems.
I suppose that if we could do an "I dream of Jeannie" shake of our heads and disappear all DU entirely, that would be one thing, but that option doesn't seem available---and if it were, we would be better off getting rid of fissile materials, not the non-fissile natural variant.
5) Not necessarily either/or. If wind is essential (and I think it is) but reliability/cost is the barrier (they are much the same), then the optimal solution might be one that recognizes that different settings call for different solutions.
In some settings the right approach may be the one that makes each individual wind machine more reliable, not one that only works if we figure out a massive solution that we have to tie into.
So in certain locales, where there is a natural height differential, water is not scarce, and there is abundant wind not too distant, then perhaps a pumped storage unit serving many wind units would be the ideal.
But for the many other places where the demand or the wind map dictates fewer turbines, perhaps integral energy storage systems make more sense.
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:31 am
05 Jun 2007
Nifty
http://electricitystorage.org/tech/technologies_compariso ...
http://electricitystorage.org/tech/technologies_compariso ...
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amazingdrx Posted 5:25 pm
05 Jun 2007
This system would conserve and clean flood water. JMG is showing his true spots as a nuclear engineer.
In fact just as coal plants are actually closing down now in austrailia due to water shortage, so will nuclear plants.
As far as grinding fish in dams (another convenient concern for the pro-nuclear, anti-every other alternative crowd, as bats in wind machines), that need not happen anyway. Better fish friendly dam design for pumped hydro is possible.
Also this hydro storage would be new storage, not built on old problematic dams which should actually be replaced with devices that harvest river current power without dams.
He has opposed every solution touted here on the basis that they are "wonder toys", but nukes are wonderfull?!? Gloomy gus wants US all to glow in the dark, saves on street lighting.
His sole purpose here it seems was to critique everything except going back to amish living (as his hero Kuntsler proposes) then suddenly pop out the nuclear option after we all were sufficiently depressed. What a puny plan, hehehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Gar Lipow Posted 5:28 pm
05 Jun 2007
JMG. I don't agree that nuclear electricity does need to be part of the solution, and I'm perfectly w willing to phase out nuclear subs as well. But even if we have to continue to process large amounts of uranium, you can store it like any other low level nuclear waste, rather than incorporating into human acitivities. Also I'll be very surprised if you can make the numbers work. Friction aside, you are gaining kilograms and losing head. I think you are going to find that alone keeps the numbers from adding. And even with your winch system, I suspect that you are going to run into friction problems. There are reasons that proposals for mechanical storage are general limited to pumped storage, compressed air and flywheels.
SustainableGreen
One of the first problems has already been pointed out, it which I'll add one. Many areas of the country simple don't have the topographic relief to provide the head needed for cost effectiveness of hydropower. Many other areas don't have the water. So 'spreading them around' does not hold water.
Another issue has to do with constructing not one but 2 reservoirs?! 2, count 'em, 2 locations, where the existing terrestrial riverine habitat is utterly gone? Ignoring disturbance for pipeline construction/maintenance?
OK, seems like you are ignoring some of my points. If you create two reservoirs and a closed system to recycle the water, you can avoid water courses entirely. You are not removing any "terrestrial riverine habitat". You are concreting over a fairly substantial amount of land, but much less than we currently concrete over for existing hydro. You take water for storage once, and that is the end of your water use (minus trivial consumption to replace leaks and evaporation). So you can put this kind of pumped storage in the desert. Or you can find an old mine near a hill. In terms of flatlands: no you can't put modular pumped storage every where. But your only limitations are: altitude difference, access to grid, and lack of environmental sensitivity. You ought to be able to find plenty of places where you can do storage without extreme environmental harm. And even if it is not possible to find a place in every state, suppose you are spreading 50 square miles of storage over 30 states instead of 50 states. Still less than 2 sqaure miles sates. Suppose you only have 20 states with suitable land: that is 2.5 miles per states. I don't think you visualize how small an area fifty sqare miles is compared to land normal means of supplying energy consumes. If John Mcgrath's recent post is right, dams in the U.S. consumes thousands of square miles. If you look at the land consumed by coal, or the land consumed by oil again, 50 square miles of pumped storage that does not have to draw from existing water courses is trivial. I doubt Uranium mining can claim that small a footprint.
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JMG Posted 7:26 pm
05 Jun 2007
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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amazingdrx Posted 10:24 pm
05 Jun 2007
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Nucbuddy Posted 11:24 pm
05 Jun 2007
...Or you could simply click on this link:
convert-me.com/en/convert/units/energy/energy.kwh.en.html
One kilowatt hour is equal to:
[...]
Foot-Pound 2655297
That means that:
a 2.7-million-pound weight raised one foot represents one single kWh of stored energy.
a 2.7-million-pound weight at the top of a 400-foot windmill tower represents 400 kWh of stored energy.
At 3.0 cents/kWh, the stored energy would be worth $12 of nuclear electricity.
The nacelle on top of the GE 1.5-megawatt (MW) windmill weighs 56 tons, or 112,000 pounds. Our theorized energy-storage slug weighs more than 20-times as much as that nacelle. (Perhaps windmill-towers are not designed to hold that much weight.)
If that 1.5 MW windmill produces an average of 400 kilowatts of power (26.7% capacity factor), raising the slug would store one hour of the turbine's average power production (at 100% efficiency), or 16-minutes of the turbine's maximum-rated power production. Assuming 80% mechanical efficiency up and down, that 16-minutes of storage drops to 10.24 minutes.
So, 2.7 million pounds at 400-feet equals about 10-minutes of a 1.5 MW windmill at full power -- or about 3-minutes of a 5 MW windmill at full power.
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GreyFlcn Posted 12:25 am
06 Jun 2007
Warehouse Cold Storage Demand-Response
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/night_wind_proj.p ...
http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=486
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Gar Lipow Posted 1:26 am
06 Jun 2007
Absolutely. And that can be extended. You can store climate control and low temp energy in general. You can also buffer compressed air, and a number of industrial processes. However if we are talking about a low or zero carbon grid, you will still need actual dispatchable electricity -- which will require either electricity storage, or storage of high temp heat. (Note that this even applies to nukes. Nukes are capital intensive. So if you want to use them for anything beyond base load, there is a real advantage to storing some of their output; then you can size them run at close to full capacity most of the time.)
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SustainableGreen Posted 1:33 am
06 Jun 2007
Hey, Gar: With respect I did acknowledge that the closed system was the one--the only one--I could see not having vast unaddressed environmental impacts.
Despite the apparently small area, I find it very difficult to imagine finding appropriate areas that are not already part of the hydrographic landscape, then, if you create reservoirs in the conventional way, there would be terrestrial, riparian, and riverine impacts, for the reach of the stream that is impounded.
Due to my background in ecology and related issues, I have become very skeptical of projects that even hint of further damage to habitat, biodiversity--any part of the biotic community and its abiotic support.
I am also extremely leery of comparisons of proposed projects to the previous egregious damage we have already done. That is a very low standard to use, since by comparison virtually anything looks good. Previous dams and impoundments, coal and oil production impacts, and more, are a very poor yardstick. We can, we must, do much better than the past. Indeed the past is part of the problem.
Another issue brought up concerns either constructed or natural wetlands. Keep pumping and filling a wetland over a short cycle too many times, and it will have zero habitat value. The biota will not adapt and survive. Claiming wetland value would be erroneous, and at some point dishonest.
I would not foreclose the potential in the future, but we can gain much more with efficiency before we attempt such projects.
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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Kristina & Jason Makansi Posted 5:03 am
06 Jun 2007
I believe strongly in energy storage and have been part of an ongoing effort to get politicans, regulators and talking heads interested. For more info, visit http://www.energystoragecouncil.org. We were instrumental in getting energy storage into the last energy bill, but it is an idea whose time, unfortunately, just doesn't seem to have come yet.
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Nucbuddy Posted 8:03 am
06 Jun 2007
(Emphasis added by Nucbuddy.)
Including your qualifier require, your statement does not apply to nukes. You can profitably run them at full capacity all of the time, as long as the competition is more expensive. (Yes, that is a tautology, but your statement -- being fallacious -- happens to reduce to an absurdity.) At $0.03/kWh, it only costs $0.72 to produce a full 24-hour day of a nuclear kilowatt. All you have to do to break even is make that $0.72 in a day, and it doesn't matter how you do it -- even if, at night, you have to sell your kilowatt for $0.01/kWh, or even route your kilowatt to a shunt (e.g., a powersink) for $0.00/kWh.
If our nuclear kilowatt were to sell for an average of $0.01/hour between 8PM and 8AM (12 hours = $0.12), $0.03/hour between 8AM and 12PM, and 6PM and 8PM (6 hours = $0.18), and $0.07/hour between 12PM and 6PM (6 hours = $0.42), we would meet our break-even point. We could even shut-down overnight, if the noon-to-six slot were $0.09/hour. However, it is important to note that electric power, like any other commodity and no-matter how abundant it is, is never really worth zero. To take advantage of that fact, metering might be done-away with (as, in fact, it has been done-away with in relation to other utilities such as local telephone service and internet service) and replaced with tiered service (similarly, as metering in-fact has been replaced -- though crudely, and not in the elegant way described below -- with tiered-service in relation to telephone and internet).
Tiered-service would work like this: multiple (say, for example, five) service-Tiers would be made available. The Tiers would represent reliability-factors, and the more-expensive the service-Tier, the more-reliable the service. At any given instant when demand exceeded capacity (e.g., whenever there were no power-service to be routed to a shunt), Tier-1 service would be the first to go and tier-five service would be the last to go. The service-cutoff progression would look like this, numbered in-order from low demand/supply conditions to high demand/supply conditions:
Tier-1 rolling blackout. All higher Tiers good.
Tier-1 total blackout. Tier-2 rolling blackout. All higher Tiers good.
Tiers 1-2 total blackout. Tier-3 rolling blackout. All higher Tiers good.
Tiers 1-3 total blackout. Tier-4 rolling blackout. Tier-5 good.
Tiers 1-4 total blackout. Tier-5 rolling blackout.
Tiers 1-5 total blackout. No power available to anyone.
(Note that Condition-6 would only occur when no powerplants were online, or when the transmission system had suffered a total failure to route to at least one Tier-5 subscriber. Demand alone would not be capable of producing an instance of Condition-6. It could only occur at an instant when supply were at exactly zero.)
Your guarantee of reliability at your given Tier is the fact that there exists some given proportion of service-subscribers below you. Tier-1 subscribers, of course, have no such guarantee and can probably bank on at-least daily rolling blackouts.
The free-market would set prices. If you were dissatisfied with your Tier, you could move up to a more-expensive Tier. If you were on a budget or could somehow economically store your power, you could move down and live with sometimes-power.
However-much power you might draw at any given instant, as long as your service were not blacked-out, would be irrelevant. However, service would be marketed in an additional dimension: bandwidth. (Again, this is precisely the same way internet service is marketed today.) And, again, the free market would most-reasonably set the prices. Service at Tier-4 reliability, but Tier-3 bandwidth, might at some market-instant cost the same as service at Tier-3 reliability, but Tier-4 bandwidth. You would have to decide, based on your tastes and needs, which were more-important to you -- reliability or bandwidth.
The electric-service uility's incentive for providing high-bandwidth, reliable service to its Tier-5 bandwidth and Tier-5 reliability subscribers would be to entice lower-Tier subscribers to move up to premium service.
And what of the subscriber's (of any given Tier) incentive to save bandwidth? There would be none -- and none would be needed. The commons would actually be served by the individual subscriber's use of as much bandwidth as possible, as much of the time as possible. Conservation of bandwidth and bandtime would actually (and precisely as it does today) make the community's electrical service more expensive, rather than less.
If it is true -- as Danish wind-industry insiders have recently stated to the public -- that windpower breaks-even at $0.18/kWh, at a 25% capacity factor a kilowatt of windpower breaks-even at (18 cents x 6 hours =) $1.08 in a day. A nuclear kilowatt beats a wind kilowatt by $0.36 per day, even though the nuclear kilowatt is 100% dispatchable and results in four times the marketable energy.
For another example of dispatchable, continuous, no-throttling power without storage, we can look at an instance of microhydro. If I were to live on a piece of property with a decent year-round stream, and if I were to install a 3kW off-grid microhydro setup, I might not need any storage if my maximum power-need at any given moment did not exceed 3kW, and if I simply had a spare 3kW water-heater to which to route any excess power. There would not be any absolute need to throttle or shut down the turbine, because the excess power is simply sent to the shunt. This would make that part of life very simple for me, and would give me the benefit of instant-dispatchability 24 hours a day -- just like I would have if I were connected to the grid.
(And as for the thermal pollution produced, it would be exactly equal to that which would have been created by the water freely-flowing downstream without having-been slowed-down along the way by the microhydro unit.)
The take-home message from all of this is that a 100% nuclear grid is 100% dispatchable, without requiring any storage, power-throttling, or daily off-peak shutdowns.
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GRLCowan Posted 8:36 am
06 Jun 2007
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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amazingdrx Posted 10:14 pm
06 Jun 2007
But the synchronicity of water conservation,flood control, wetland restoration, and pumped hydro storage seems to indicate it would be beneficial on so many levels that a dual system of backup from biogas and hydro storage is indicated.
As far as some sort of closed loop system, that negates the water management benefits. Pumped hydro could be done in a manner to carefully avoid the disastrous impacts on fish and wildlife that some dams have posed.
Talk about scientifically challenged? Posing that old, lift a weight to store power scheme. Don't "process and operations management consultant" s and nuclear engineers have to take physics 101 somewhere in their illustrious careers anymore? Hehehey.
Sorry mr wondertoy. But you got it comin' with all your smartass talkin' down to us dissin' our solutions.
Listen to GRL! It may sound crazy to dump nuclear waste in the ocean, but in their hearts just about every nuclear industry bigshot agrees with his analysis. Be afraid of nuclear power, be very afraid. They will do and have done stuff like this in the past.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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GRLCowan Posted 3:25 am
11 Jun 2007
I can't speak for them any more than the quoted troll can, but no-one can really disagree with my analysis; note that no disagreement is claimed.
He says it "may" sound crazy to dispose of this particular byproduct in the ocean because it does not, in fact, sound crazy. The numbers establish that it is sane. Also see Engineer-Poet at RealClimate, no friend of nukes, but willing to give them a point no honest person can refrain from giving:
I find it particularly amusing that they postulate an energy penalty for "disposal" of depleted uranium, when the quantity already in the ocean would argue for taking the excess as oxide and just dumping it in barrels from any convenient ship.
In another thread this thread has been characterized as getting "angry responses". This may reflect some awareness on the speaker's part that anger would be justified, because I don't see it being expressed here.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around boron fire, car goes
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amazingdrx Posted 12:08 am
18 Jun 2007
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Gar Lipow Posted 4:28 am
18 Jun 2007
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amazingdrx Posted 1:40 am
26 Dec 2007
I think those extra resevoirs should be restored wetlands along rivers. Flood waters flowing into them through side gates in rivers. Generating power as they enter and leave, then adding to the regular river flow in low water times to keep the existing hydropower facilities operational.
Water could also fill these resevoir wetlands from wind powered pumps along the river course. Pumping water ever higher, resevoir to wetland resevoir up the river.
This would store extra carbon in the restored wetlands from CO2 in the atmosphere converted by vegetation. And it helps restore aquifers and purify flood waters.
By pumping the water up hill to natural waste treatment lagoons, even city storm sewer overflow water could be safely reclaimed. Water is the oil of this century. Shortage is already rampant.
Waste treatment, carbon sink(ing), conservation, water reclamation, restoring aquifers, hydro power electric grid backup, wind power storage, and flood control. Flood control is especially important in this bushwacked climate. The related costs are huge.
Fish and other wildlife now killed in massive numbers by drought combined with hydropower demands and nuclear power plant cooling demands, would have a constant, clean, cool, steady flow in their river habitat with this scheme. much better for fish and fishermen.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Matt G Posted 5:45 am
26 Dec 2007
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Nucbuddy Posted 7:33 am
26 Dec 2007
Your suggestion has been made and replied-to over and over and over and over and over.
Gravitational energy-storage does not pencil out, unless it is gargantuan in scale.
google.com/search?q=pumped+storage+caes
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