All the wind and solar industries need is storage, whether that's battery banks, or pumped storage, chemical storage, adiabatic pneumatic storage. The storage, or excess capacity, is what smooths the bump
Sure the dominant base generators (say coal or nuclear) are dragged down by load if it is allowed to (not enough on demand transient capacity).
The baseline generation will set the frequency to which all others have to synch with. If pulled out of sync a generator just drops out of the network.
Hey, I even get to manually synchronise to the grid nearly daily. No auto synch here.
You are absolutely right. That is also what the man in the electricity museum said, I just didn't remember it accurately.
IIRC motion picture arcs had to be DC prevent any hint of beat frequencies. They had motor feeds that needed frequent tweaking (peering through welders glass) due to nonuniform composition and of course if the film stopped and you didn't catch the gate in time magic smoke.
That's okay, America's trees are dying by the hundreds of millions due to drought and unstoppable damage from bark beetles. You folks in the UK might as well burn them and at least get some use out of them.Or, in the case of the UK, converting them to burn America's trees!
The bark beetles used to be kept in check by cold winter temperatures, but global warming has increased average winter temperatures so much that the beetles are no longer killed off annually, and so multiply at a terrifying rate, wiping out entire forests in both the USA and Canada.
There were an estimated 129 million trees dead in California alone by the end of 2017 ( Record 129 million trees dead in California due to drought, bark beetle | abc30.com ), and who knows how many millions more trees dead since then.
Besides, the USAs current political leader has promised to bring back coal, so who needs trees.
On a loosely related note, I've read that the main reason Britain's Industrial Revolution was powered by coal, was because most of the trees had already been cut down and burned, so wood had already become too expensive, and an alternative fuel was badly needed. And this was in the eighteenth century.
And that is how, a century or so later, coal-fired boilers came to be the main method of electricity production in much of the world. And this thread is back on topic.
-Gnobuddy
Gnobuddy - actaully most of Britain's really good woodlands were always /already of interest to source hardwood for our Navy.
It just happened that much of the land also overlies huge, dispersed coal reserves, that were discovered to also be useful and easier to form coke as the more energetic fuel: and that fired the Industrial revolution once conveniently found that instead of taking wood to charcoal, you can do the same to coal and the result is far more energy dense.
In no small part this is because the coal measures under the UK are ancient and exceptionally-dense in terms of carbon - the anthracite-end of things, not soft/brown tending-towards lignite, as so much elsewhere in the world.
The scale of some of this mining, and the way it changed the landscape of England and Wales hereabout is fascinating - also outside the scope a comment here. Yet the effects on local landscape - even in the county within which I live - can be traced in small hillocks, voids, ancient place names carried into local street names, the creation of canals to supply local towns with coals, right down to unmapped 'bottle-mine' voids created by single workers 2-3centuries ago that still cause unexpected settlement issues - and all sorts of other small/human-scale industrial archaeology.
ATB
It just happened that much of the land also overlies huge, dispersed coal reserves, that were discovered to also be useful and easier to form coke as the more energetic fuel: and that fired the Industrial revolution once conveniently found that instead of taking wood to charcoal, you can do the same to coal and the result is far more energy dense.
In no small part this is because the coal measures under the UK are ancient and exceptionally-dense in terms of carbon - the anthracite-end of things, not soft/brown tending-towards lignite, as so much elsewhere in the world.
The scale of some of this mining, and the way it changed the landscape of England and Wales hereabout is fascinating - also outside the scope a comment here. Yet the effects on local landscape - even in the county within which I live - can be traced in small hillocks, voids, ancient place names carried into local street names, the creation of canals to supply local towns with coals, right down to unmapped 'bottle-mine' voids created by single workers 2-3centuries ago that still cause unexpected settlement issues - and all sorts of other small/human-scale industrial archaeology.
ATB
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Of course it isnt simple. But it's already happening challenges or none (and of course there are many challenges, not least where to put the storage)
This is the same be it for batteries or other more conventional storage techniques (pumped storage requires a huge dam and lake, granted these are probably there already, but the real estate needed is still huge)
The denied Tidal Lagoon would have been an excellent addition, if partnered with some storage.
The same goes for all the installed wind generation., what's wrong with a couple of 40ft shipping containers with storage and converters, at the base of each mast?
Indeed, an acquaintance of mine who lived in a remote location installed a micro-hydroelectric generating system using a stream on his property. During periods of light load his system switched in some old electric oven elements which were immersed in the stream, thus equalizing the load over time. This also created a nice warm swimming pool (once he excavated the reservoir). If you could put up with the mosquitoes, black flies, and deer flies I gather it could be quite pleasant.
I am going to guess that for storage to be useful it would need to hold at least a day's generation. Consider a typical wind turbine of 5MW. It would need 120MWh of storage. An electric car has about 20-50kWh of storage, so we would need batteries equivalent to a few thousand cars. I think that would take more than a couple of shipping containers. The batteries would need to be replaced from time to time.
It seems that the best way to store energy is in chemical form e.g. coal or oil.
It seems that the best way to store energy is in chemical form e.g. coal or oil.
And currently a whole host of countries have decided to bury oil back underground e.g. 700 million barrels quietly hidden along America's Gulf Coast.
BBC - Future - Why the US hides 700 million barrels of oil underground
Proven world reserves yet to be exploited are: coal 1.1 trillion tonnes, oil 1.73 trillion barrels, natural gas 187.1 trillion cubic metres.
At current rates of production that means that coal will last us about 150 years and oil & gas about 50 years. The clock is ticking!
Until fission becomes accepted again or fusion becomes practical, this is true for providing a stable electrical grid. I would add natural gas to the options as well. Utilities are struggling with the availability of dispatchable power as renewables increase in GW capacity. So much so that some have natural gas turbines running at light load (spinning reserve) in order to buffer the variability of both instantaneous load and renewable output balance. A very inefficient process, and does not make for a happy turbine. But the nature of current renewable technology demands it.
This is the real power side of the challenge, but the same challenges exist in the reactive power balance. Inverters have a very limited reactive power capability in comparison with rotating equipment. Older models have little to no support of local voltage variation, and recent models are only beginning to standardize on algorithms to deal with grid support. As the grid becomes more and more segregated by small sized renewables, it gets more and more unstable.
I found it entertaining that some utilities are installing synchronous condensers as a stopgap to provide voltage support. The rotating fields are able to provide near instantaneous reactive output in response to transient conditions. Back to the old school methods...
Recent IEEE PES articles have been focusing heavily on the renewables challenges. Sure, we all support the use of renewable energy, but it isn't the cure-all solution. We are still reliant on fossil fuels for a stable grid.
Certainly, batteries are a horrible solution. Let's talk about heavy metals, acids, recycling, disposability, and overall environmental impact.
There are other chemical options besides coal and oil.
I cant remember all the details, but I did a bit of research for my degree, which was energy storage.
What interested me was Redox batteries, or Hydride slurry energy storage, and the pneumatic storage testing done in Germany - and why these weren't more wide spread and adopted.
Of course geography dictate where pneumatic storage can be used, but in Britain, where we may not have a large cave to pressurise, we have lots if smaller caves and tunnel systems.
And chemical slurry storage? I'm sure there are E, H & S issues, but isnt there with all energy generation and storage already?
It wasnt until I had to research it all, back in 2014 or so, that i realised that there were so many potential options, which havent been implemented.
In the end, it seems theres a lack of political appetite for such things. With the B word looming and our peak demand exceeding generation at times, I wonder when the brown outs will start.
That's pretty much the sum of my knowledge on the matter!
Except that, in contrast to what Zigzagflux says, theres been quite an upsurge in rapid startup GTA gensets in the last decade or so, which are far more efficient. Natural gas, is one of the main contributors to load management on a smaller (《GVA) scale
But the point is, coal and nuclear has been the baseline supply for many decades, and with much of the coal gone, there is a whole in baseline supply. Storage cant help with that. I'm not particularly pro nuclear, but in the absence of other options, such as biomass (I have a memory of a rubbish burning plant near me, and in Wolverhampton I once lived near to a power plant which burned waste tyres from the nearby factory)
Some biomass would seem to be great, to reduce landfill, but the stench if burning tyres wasnt particularly great. In that instance I reckon coal would be preferable!
I cant remember all the details, but I did a bit of research for my degree, which was energy storage.
What interested me was Redox batteries, or Hydride slurry energy storage, and the pneumatic storage testing done in Germany - and why these weren't more wide spread and adopted.
Of course geography dictate where pneumatic storage can be used, but in Britain, where we may not have a large cave to pressurise, we have lots if smaller caves and tunnel systems.
And chemical slurry storage? I'm sure there are E, H & S issues, but isnt there with all energy generation and storage already?
It wasnt until I had to research it all, back in 2014 or so, that i realised that there were so many potential options, which havent been implemented.
In the end, it seems theres a lack of political appetite for such things. With the B word looming and our peak demand exceeding generation at times, I wonder when the brown outs will start.
That's pretty much the sum of my knowledge on the matter!
Except that, in contrast to what Zigzagflux says, theres been quite an upsurge in rapid startup GTA gensets in the last decade or so, which are far more efficient. Natural gas, is one of the main contributors to load management on a smaller (《GVA) scale
But the point is, coal and nuclear has been the baseline supply for many decades, and with much of the coal gone, there is a whole in baseline supply. Storage cant help with that. I'm not particularly pro nuclear, but in the absence of other options, such as biomass (I have a memory of a rubbish burning plant near me, and in Wolverhampton I once lived near to a power plant which burned waste tyres from the nearby factory)
Some biomass would seem to be great, to reduce landfill, but the stench if burning tyres wasnt particularly great. In that instance I reckon coal would be preferable!
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Electrochemical?russc said:
Base load could be supplied by nuclear, but people are twitchy about nuclear.
I am not too keen on burning natural gas to make electricity. NG is too good a fuel to waste in this way. In the UK it only started in earnest when the industry was privatised, because NG stations are quick and cheap to build so suit the private sector. Before this, burning NG was frowned on in power stations.
...and if we actually burn all that fuel, earth will be rendered uninhabitable to all but a handful of hardy species adapted to extreme heat, or those that live in environments where earth's surface temperatures are irrelevant.At current rates of production that means that coal will last us about 150 years and oil & gas about 50 years. The clock is ticking!
Tardigrades and the deep-sea ecosystems around ocean floor hydrothermal vents will probably be fine. Those scorpions that live in scorching deserts might do okay, too, though even they need a relatively cool place to hide in until the sun goes down.
As I write this, France is baking in a record-breaking heat wave that saw nearly temperatures of nearly 43 C in Paris: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/heatwave-paris-uk-london-netherlands-europe-1.5224555
And Russia is still on fire too, in a repeat of events from 2003, also triggered by extreme heat: Siberia's wildfires 'getting bigger' despite Russian airforce intervention, Greenpeace warns | Euronews
A research study in 2015 found the maximum survivable temperature for human beings was 35 degrees Celsius wet bulb thermometer temperature; this is equivalent to 100% humidity and 35 degrees C, or, say, 50% humidity and 46 degrees C.
A wet-bulb thermometer has the business end wrapped in wet fabric - in dry air evaporation cools it down to below air temperature, in exactly the same way we humans and all mammals use sweat to cool ourselves. Our cooling mechanism fails at 100% humidity, and it turns out that if the temperature is 35 C at the same time, we die in quite a short time, unless we can find some external source of cooling (cold water, air conditioning, luxuries unavailable to hundreds of millions of people in poor tropical parts of planet earth.)
History has demonstrated many times that homo sapiens have a hard time thinking years ahead, and restraint is hardly a key attribute of our species. So I expect we will continue to burn as much fossil fuel as we can manage to extract, by any means possible, for as long as it is possible.
I don't know how to play the fiddle, so I'm off to play my guitar while Russia burns. And France. And the Arctic ( 'Unprecedented': more than 100 Arctic wildfires burn in worst ever season | World news | The Guardian ). And a good chunk of the rest of the planet ( GFW Fires )
-Gnobuddy
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Well, the windmills in Maine are up narrow roads on high remote hills. Getting masts and blades up there is already a large part of the cost. Is it really necessary to put the buffer up there?
I'm thinking the buffer goes near the people, city sub-station. Easy to deliver and service. Here it does not buffer a single windmill bank but "any" available energy.
(Yes, in the rare *high* wind a windmill may offer more power than it is worth building a wire for, so a buffer at the mill marginally increases output/$, if the buffer is low-cost.)
Of course there are projects to battery-bank server-farms and single homes.
Basically agreed. But dogs, also mammals, don't sweat. Maybe other mammals, too. That's why they used polar dogs for their successful explorations of the North and South poles, while others with sweating ponies failed catastrophically.
Best regards!
Thanks for the correction! I'd completely forgotten about dogs and other non-sweating mammals.
Okay, the new slogan for humans on an overheated planet is "Pant, don't sweat!"
-Gnobuddy
It's funny, noone wants wind turbines in the country it seems...I'd rather that that a nuclear plant in 10 miles radius or so...and well, there just so pretty.
Recently, as I alluded to the UK somehow supplied all the energy used, due to wind power. It may have been a particularly windy day, but we are a big island, theres always wind. Often enough that not all turbines are turning, pitched out for maintenance or because they're not needed.
But I fully advocate "personal" micro generation and storage, if only it was feasible for all and not those who have the luxury of land (over here, elsewhere it doesnt count) and the funds to pay for it all.
In a grid application for stabilising for peak losd times, say 6-7:30am when everyones either getting up and showering with their (possibly electric) shower, ad flicking the kettle on for a cuppa.
Well any storage attached to say a 5MW turbine, doesnt need to supply 24h of load, but perhaps only 2 hours in an 8 hour period, charging between.
I mean when you ask an RC guy how much capacity he wants in the battery he either says I dont want a battery I want Nitro, or he says as many Ah as possible.
Sure, it would be great to be able to easily store 1GW in a suitcase and apply that to a turbine, and have say 24 hours supply. Or much more likely is storage for short to medium terms to bolster the grid stability to transient loads, faults disturbances, and peak load times.
These things are dealt with separately, longer term shifts in load, hours- this is what the CCGTA are being used for. I agree, worse than using coal, when gas is a useful clean fuel But its agility is what it's used for.
The shorter term could be dealt with by storage (say less than 2 hours)
The transients are dealt with quite adequately with Synchro condenser systems, and batteries would only add to the capacity on the grid. It's funny to think that some of these machines, hydro generators, and Synch sets, are close to, or exceed 100 years old.
The eldest of my rotating children was born c.1928, but that's DC and a whole other story.
Certainly this type of storage idea would go ways to dealing with, our (UK) peak surge vs base load dilemma
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The micro generation you're talking about is exactly what I want to do for my own house right now. Get a small wind turbine or solar panel, just a few hundred whats or something, and let it charge a battery all day or night, then use that to help with my peak energy usage. Maybe calculate it so it's just enough to cover my average home theater use every other day or something.
Stupid legislation though makes it near impossible because as you said people think they're ugly.
Stupid legislation though makes it near impossible because as you said people think they're ugly.
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