Capturing All The Turbine's Energy

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by jmpet, Apr 24, 2011.

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  1. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    Not at all, three years is not that long, and Wind wasn't even on the list 3 years ago, so for you to say that most of Scotland's economy rests on them is a tad BOLD and bold statements like that require proof. I presented the most recent data I could find to show your claim was highly unlikely, but go ahead, show some newer research that supports your assertion.

    Not saying they aren't.
    That's not what your assertion was though.

    Arthur
     
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  3. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    You need to be a tad more realistic....

    Coal, Oil and Natural gas produces 85% of the energy we use.

    Nuclear, Biomass and Hydro produced 13% of our energy.

    Solar Thermal, Wind, GeoThermal and Solar PV combined accounted for a bit over 1%

    BUT

    The population of the globe is going to go up by 2 Billion or so people by the middle of this century, which is going to create a huge demand for more energy.

    That new demand will be provided primarily by Coal, Natural Gas and Oil.

    Arthur
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2011
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  5. Odin'Izm Procrastinator Registered Senior Member

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    My original point:

    With the government planing to cover 80% of their energy with wind in the near future, and 31% by the end of this year, how is this assumption false?Plenty of companies are making money from the simple 'intent' of creation of these sites, the money made from their creation is another matter and rests with the farm owner, for the contractors and due diligence teams, this money comes up front. There is a huge amount of recent investment, and as far as Scottish exports go, its the one which holds the most promise, as people have a phobia of nuclear energy, which would be a personal choice.
     
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  7. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    And building a massive water tank, add in a generator isn't? Especially for what? Dozens, even hundreds of turbines on a farm?
     
  8. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    Not 80% of ENERGY, 80% of Electricity.
    Big difference.

    And NOT 80% from WIND, 80% from RENEWABLES
    Big difference.

    As to impact of GDP, Energy is just one of many sectors of Scottish GDP

    But even so:

    Renewable energy is currently estimated to account for at least 3,000 jobs in Scotland, with the potential to support at least 16,000 new jobs over the next decade.

    In 2006, the energy sector contributed over £4.8 billion in GDP, around 5 per cent of the Scottish total.

    But only a tiny part of that was Wind, because in contrast to the 3,000 jobs in Renewable Energy field, overall Employment in the energy sector (excluding renewable energy), was 40,700 in 2007;

    Now compare the 16,000 potential jobs this decade in Renewables to other Scottish sectors:

    Creative industries accounted for a total of 60,700 employee jobs

    Financial Services provided 95,500 jobs.

    Food and Drink provided 316,000 jobs

    Life Sciences provided 31,000 jobs

    Tourism related industries employed 219,900 people

    Universities employ 35,159 full-time equivalent staff.

    So NO, most of Scotland's economy does NOT rely on wind turbines.

    http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Economy/Key-Sectors

    Arthur
     
  9. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps you do not know that pumped storage, is very economical in some locations.

    For example, NYC's ConEdision has had a reservoir on top of a mountain alongside the Hudson River for more than 30 years, as I recall. Building it, buying the pumps to pump Hudson River water up and the generators to capture the energy that was in the stored as water was released back into the Hudson was the cheapest solution to storing energy when there was low demand and getting most of it back when the demand was high. - Cheaper than building new plants to serve the peak demand as a pumped storage system allowed their already owned cheapest power generation facilities (their "base load" generation) to be more fully utilized.

    Not all locations have a mountain near a river, so, as an alternative, old mines, salt caverns, etc. are used for compressed air storage, especially in Germany as I recall. At least one proposal, of interest as it can be done almost anywhere is to find or create an underground lake and use it with a surface lake for pumped storage. I don't know if this was done - I just read the economics that showed it could be.

    Either of these already used approaches could store more than 10 times as much energy as your suggested storage in capacitor for a fraction of the cost. I just get annoyed when "wishers and dreamers" make silly wild suggestions with zero economic analysis to support their feasibility.

    Of course the cheapest storage, if grid connected, is simply to feed all the energy you can into the grid, to displace energy production from fossil fuels - they are storage systems too with multi-million years of stored solar energy.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 25, 2011
  10. Odin'Izm Procrastinator Registered Senior Member

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    I see your point and I should have added tidal to my argument, however, while limiting it to wind may be unfair, it will provide the largest portion of the planned 80%, with improvement in turbine power output contributing roughly 50% to the total.

    Out of all the sectors you mentioned, energy provides the highest GVA per employee. As the sector is specialised, its hard for them to out recruit services and drink-food tourism etc, the value of employees in the sector is greater, and attracts more foreign investment.

    Renewable energy as a whole is a growing market for Scotland, and offshore wind is part of that with close to 5bn in public funds being invested, not to mention part of the financial sector being physically tied in to the renewable energy sector.

    http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/917/0081161.pdf

    "Total renewables capacity installed, consented or under construction is now 5.5 GW – more than our 2011 target for 31 per cent"

    Between 06-07 employment in the sector grew by 10%, far more than the national average.

    For some reason I don't have as much hope for a boom in life-sciences, and food-and-drink.

    Can we at least agree that energy, and associated finance are going to be one of the largest exports in the near future?
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2011
  11. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    In 2009 the United States had 21.5 GW of pumped storage capacity generating capacity.

    That's about 2.5% of our baseload generating capacity and pumping this water up hill consumed 4,627 GWh more electricity than it produced.

    http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epates.html

    Arthur
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2011
  12. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    The much bigger error was to use the term ENERGY when you meant ELECTRICITY.

    The most recent figures I can find were in 2002, but in that year Scotland used ~ 250 TeraWatt hours of energy, of which 5 were produced by Renewables and of that 4 were produced by Hydro. Now Wind has gone up quite a bit since then, probably bringing renewables up to nearly 10 TeraWatt hours, but still next to nothing compared to Scottish ENERGY use.

    http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/01/19092748/7

    No

    In 2009, Electricity and Gas amounted to but 4.5% of Scottish Exports, and Gas was bigger (and to put the growth in perspective, 5 years earlier Electricity and Gas were 4% of exports).

    And remember, that wind only produces ~11% of your electricity, so it's share of that 4.5% of exports is pretty tiny.

    To put wind in its proper perspective, Scotch and other spirits were 5.9% of exports.

    http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Economy/Exports/GCS2009tab
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2011
  13. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Thanks. Unfortunately, your link does not tell how much energy was pulled back from the storage. It would be nice to know that to compare with 4,627GWh total energy used for pumping - to get the system energy return efficiency.

    If 4,000 GWh was was returned from storage, then the storage efficiency would be 4000 / 4627 = 86.45% which I think is a reasonable guess at system turn around efficiency. Assume that and that value of the power returned at peak demand is three* times greater than surplus base load power at minimum demand periods, (middle of the night, etc.) then the "economic efficiency" is 3 x 0.8645 = 2.95 monetary gain. - put in cheap energy and get back slightly less but more valuable energy.

    Thus, it is strange but not too in accurate, to think of pumped storage system as a "value transformer."

    ---------------
    * If all the base load was nuclear generation, where fuel cost is tiny fraction of the total cost and there are hours when the expensive capital is not being fully used, then then the factor of three could easily be 20. A really high step up value transformer! - like getting a dollar for giving a nickle!
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 25, 2011
  14. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    I think you misread the info, Billy. That was not the cost of pumping it uphill - that figure reflects BOTH the pumping cost AND the amount of power regenerated when if flowed back down. Read it again:

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    "pumping this water up hill consumed 4,627 GWh more electricity then (sic) it produced."
     
  15. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    Most every Hydro pumped storage system I've ever seen was based on using electricity from hydro itself to pump water to a different reservoir so that come peak time more hydro based generators could be brought on line.

    The EIA only shows the Net Loss to do so. The energy produced is combined in the Hydropower column.

    Arthur
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2011
  16. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Upon second reading I agree that the 4627GWh is the net energy loss. I.e. if J GWH were stored and only j GWh were recovered, J-j =4627GWh. Also after reading some sources my assumed energy recovery efficiency, while possible with pump separate from the turbine, an efficiency of 80% is more common as reversible pump/turbine are often used but are not optimized for either function. (I use term turbine just to be clear that water is flowing back down hill thru it.)

    All the points I made in prior post remain valid. Pumped storage can perhaps best be thought of as a "value transformer" where you put in about 5 units of cheap energy and get back about 4 units of much more valuable energy.

    The value of energy is a function of when and how it is generated and when it is used /sold. The valuable energy, delivered at times of peak demand, can be 20 times more valuable than the low cost energy put into storage if, for example the demand for energy falls to less than the generation capacity of nuclear plants at night because the fuel cost of nuclear energy is only a tiny fraction of its capital cost.

    Thus the economic efficiency can be 0.8 x20 = 16 fold gain or 1600%. That was my main point: Pumped storage is by far the most used storage as it is so economically efficient and the most profitable large scale storage possible, despite perhaps 20% energy loss in the store / drain cycle.

    While reading, I learned that excavation of a water reservoir, 300 feet lower in hard rock is being done, so almost anywhere there is surface water (a lake or river) pumped storage is feasible economically. With intermittent, but free fuel sources, like wind and solar, the ability to store their produced energy and only sell it when it is most valuable should increase their use.

    In earlier post I had told of reading a study that indicated creating under ground lakes for pumped storage was economically feasible.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 26, 2011
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