Year ago I hear about things that worked like solar cells to convert wind to electricity. But they never caught on for a number of reasons: more expensive than wind turbines less efficient, still needed towers -- so zero gain.

As to micro turbines: a field of micro turbines would increase the price again. remember as you multiply turbines, you multiple generators, towers, a whole bunch of expenses.

That is why building integrated wind tens to play such a minor role: you can buy a small wind turbine in a vibration proof box that will integrate into a single family home. But the cost per peak KW will be much higher than a conventional wind generator; you will use a much smaller percent of that capacity than a conventional wind generator. So your cost per kWh will be as high or higher than a PV array. Wind really does have huge economies of scale. Big wind works better than medium wind. Medium wind works better than micro wind.

Excellent savings compared to diesel.  Do they use storage?  

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No: they are using it as a diesel supplement not replacement. As I understand it the most any one village gets from wind is 35% of their electricity. (plus some hot water and space heating from dump boilers).  The rest comes from diesel.

kind of negates the savings mentioned of buying and installing diesel equipment.  They could use some storage.  An Alaskan utility has the largest battery utility storage system in the world.  

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No, does not negate the savings. Demand is rising, as the villagers, though still poor become more prosperous. The utiltiy is putting in the wind generators instead of additional diesel storage facilities, and in some cases instead of additional diesel generators.

In terms of batteries. The problem again is that these are small offgrid villages. Each village is its own little microgrid of a few hundred people. Flow batteries and capacitors are at minimum price in the ten and hundred megawatt hour range. In villages this size, they would be buying more in the 10 to 100 kWh range. That would put storage costs in the 30 cents to 40 cents per kWh range. Add that to the cost of wind electricity and you are well past the break even point to costing their customers money if they put in storage.

The problem here is one of scale. Large villages could buy cheaper wind generators and storage. Then again larger villages could  get cheaper fossil fuel based electricity as well.

Interesting, I smell a design challenge in this scenario.  Evidently there is money to invest in a solution also.

As diesel rapidly rises some sort of combination of wind and renewable backup like biogas or storage may become cost effective.

Biogas fuel cell/microturbine would be in the right power range.  

Could hydro pump storage work in a very cold climate for a small local grid with a few hundred homes?  It's a facinating challenge in fact.

How about a water holding pond underground or under a dome that stores water pumped up from groundwater level that then generates power from the water dropping back down the well?  

It could be economical if the wind machine were coupled directly to a shaft going down the well that ran a pump.  Then the power would come directly onto the grid from a generator when the wind was blowing and the well pump would also be storing water power.  When the wind slows or stops a hydro power generator could kick in.

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pumped storage: really tough to do in a cold climate. Underground storage -- really tough to do on permafrost. Diesel is normally stored on pier high above the  ground. You don't want to go underground there. The ground is permafrost in the winter, marsh in the summer.

Biogas? How do you generate it. Remember: cold climate cloudly climate north latitude not much sunlight. Biomass productivity per acre is much much lower than world average. The average household in these villages uses 400 kWh per month. Since currently about a third of this can be produced from wind in many villages, that leaves about 280 kWh to produce from renewable backup or storage if you want to further reduce diesel use.  Don't think your average household will produce enough biowaste to produce biogas to generatet that many kWh.

In terms of storage, one way to look at it is that wind costs 15 cents per kWh.  If you store the wind storage losses will add as much as another nickel to that cost, due to electricty losses. So stored wind costs 20 cents per kWh before you add the actual capital cost and O&M of whatever you store it in. Electricity averages 45 cents per kWh in these villages, but part of that is the tiny grids within the village, the cost of administrationa and finance and so on.  So you are looking for a storage means with a combined capital cost and O&M of no more than ten cents per kWh over the lifetime of the equipment (including delivery, finance charges, and end of life disposal). And even that may be high, because I'm assuming the 30 cents out of a 45 cent total cost is generation.

400 kwh per month?  Looks like conservation is needed first.  That would be the easier than storage.  Even with permafrost, geothermal heat envelope might just reduce that a lot.  I'm assuming the very high power use is from electric heating.

If renewables and conservation could tackle this situation, they could work anywhere?  Antarctica?  Well maybe this first.

The money is there to pay 45 cents per kwh and that figure is rising with fuel costs.  At least they could afford a solution that comes in around 30 cents.  Still fascinating.  I'm not giving up.  Will revisit this one.  I dare you guys to do the same.  A challenge, hehehey.  

A dome covered pumped hydro pond could also grow algae for a biomass backup, but how to deal with the permafrost?  True long winters limit algae growth, but lobng summer days would make up for it maybe? The covered pond could use a heat envelope using groundwater heat from under the permafrost layer?  Hmmm...

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Not a lot of capacity even in that largest battery bank. But would conservation make it possible to place a few batteries in each home?  

I wonder what the temperature is say 100 feet below the permafrost?

Get that heating load down, use super efficient appliances, and maybe batteries would prove economical.   Heat pumps operating from underground temps and a heat envelope around each home circultating from groundwater in cold winter months might reduce that 400 kwh per month figure way down?

And rather than storing electric power to backup the 400 kwh per month per home, why not instead store heat in each home with heat storage salt compounds like sodium sulphate decahydrate?  When there is extra strong wind, resistance a heat pump working from groundwater heats  the heat storage salt solution in each home.  

This is a great puzzle to consider while running my marathon training runs.  Thanks for another great article Gar.  Much appreciated.

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He would place a dome over the village, hehey.

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>Bucky F solution.

>He would place a dome over the village, hehey.

I grew reading Bucky (which may explain something about me). But a dome over the village would melt the permafrost permanently.

If you can come up with a solution for these Alaskan villages, that is wonderful, and I encourage you to continue thinking about. But also consider that a very tiny percent of humanity lives in these conditions.  So if worst came to worst, as long as we supply the 99% of humanity who are not in isolated villages on permafrost renewably, we can afford ecologically for those villages to run on fossil fuels. (I'm considering not just the villages in Alaska, but related cases in places like Siberia and Finland which also have a certain number of people living in small isolated groups.)

BTW 400 kwh per household per month is actually pretty efficient. Consider that typical monthly consumption for the U.S. is 800 kWh. Typical consumption for S. Cal is 600 kWh. So they are using 2/3rds of the electricity of your typical S. Cal household in Alaska.  Geothermal heat? Again, you risk melting the permafrost. Because of the permafrost you want to minimize what you do underground. g

I think part of this challenge if you want to do something seriously on this is learn the particular conditions. For example, I note that they are using diesel instead of natural gas -- in spite of the fact that you could use the same barges that ship in diesel to ship in natural gas. I'll bet two things:

There is a good reason for this.

 If you know that good reason you know more about conditions there.

Another question: to what extent is that 400 kWh per month devoted to heating? How much use do they make use of wood in that area? The use of dump boilers seems to imply that there is some electric heating going on, but maybe those boilers are reducing the need for wood chopping rather than electricity use. Believe me, if you have to chop wood for heat, being able to reduce that would be popular. Again, knowing local conditions is important.

If a lot of that electricity use is for heating, than one solution might be to find a cheaper way to do pure dump boilers -- wind alone or even wind and sun combined with above ground seasonal storage to provide district heating. Years ago, there were some attempts to use wind to drive         giant brakes and produce heat direct from friction. The theory was that where you used wind electricity for heat,skipping the electric   stage might save capital costs. As I remember, it proved to be untrue.  The mechanical transmission of power proved more expensive than producing electricity and using it to drive resistance heating.

Yep Gar, that 400 kwh/month is low.  Misssed that somehow.  I still think it could be around 200 and that would be very cost effective conservation at 45 cents per kwh.

Is there electric heating going on?  Not sure.  First thing that comes to mind now is use the cogeneration waste heat from the diesel generators.  I bet they are heating homes with diesel too.

A zero diesel or other fossil fuel solution, 100 % wind would be nice.  I know it is a special case, but rather than justifying diesel use (the thinking would be, they live on oil profits that follow fuel inflation, so as costs go up, so does their income, but how long will oil and oil profits from alaska last?), I think this cries out for a renewable wind solution.

Regardless of ground temperature I believe that simple resistance heating with extra wind from peak production stored in a heat storage phase change salt like sodium sulfate decahydrate could do the job.  Along with a smaller higher temp molten wax storage for cooking and hot water heat storage.

The homes would need to be super insulated and use very efficient appliances.  This is a lot like the 100% wind powered Antactic home thought experiment I have proposed before.

No takers then either, hehehey.  Oh well.

Yep, me too on Bucky.  

What about buffering between permafrost and the dome perimeter with a cooling envelope that stores cold below the normal freezing point with salt water?  Then insulation between the dome and the cold storage zone?  

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I think much of this area is treeless, and most of the rest does not grow enough timber to sustain wood heating for too many souls.