Hot air or realistic?

[Scuffers]

Not gyros,
It's a heat exchange type process. (only read a snippet in an engineering mag) (i work long shifts)
They use the power generated from windmill when it's not needed to chill a gas, it is then kept chilled until it's needed, then it's brought back to normal temperature which creates the power. (doesn't need the windmill to be turning)
It's not the most efficient at the moment, but considering when the windmill is producing power and it isn't needed it's completely wasted, it will be an improvement. The protype has been used on a small scale, thi k it was 3 large scale domestic turbines, and already they have come up with efficiency improvements.
The system allows the gas to be stored at low temperature indefinately, so can be used to pick up extra demand, or used when there is no wind.
Sorry for the vagueness.
If I find the atricle again I will put in more detail.

Saw a similar thing in spain with one of those large solar power stations (one with the mirrors not the panels) they melt salt and store it in tanks and use that at night to generate the steam that powers the turbines.

that's PS10, it's horrendously expensive in terms of land, install, maintenance, etc, looks fantastic, but if it was not for your TAX money, it would never exist (it cost some €35,000,000 to build for a max 11Mw output, making it THE single most expensive plant on on the planet per Mw.

using heat as a storage medium is somewhat a dead end, it woks OK on small scale stuff, but the numbers are just stupid for any real capacity.

if you want storage, current the best way is pumped, as in Dinorwig, this is where you have a top and bottom lake, you pump the water up at night when you have surplus electric, then use it to generate power during high demand.

this was the plan back in the 70's when nuclear was the way forward, and you could then run a nuclear plant 24/7 at it's most efficient usage.

Back then, we had sensible, real engineers comming up with the stratigic way forward, now we have sound-bite politicians, and subsidy hungry industry making a right mess of it.

[sendmyusername]

Considering the alternatives, ie. Nuclear. As far costs go, forgetting enviromental issues, how much money will it take to decommisson a defunct power station. I'd say in real terms if they can figure out how to store windpower, it will be cheaper.
Once the next step is taken, cost will fall and problems will be overcome.
You used to just have dc motors/drives for speed control. Nowadays technology has moved on and dc is mainly used for torque applications only. At the time it was said itwas not cost effective or practical to use ac for motor speed control applications.
Problems will always be overcame.
It's naive to believe otherwise.

[robin]

The grid watch page shows wind producing 1.9GW right now. I guess if wind fits in then tidal could do so also.

At least tidal will be predictable, unlike wind.

I don't know what the physics of it are, though .... no idea whether a turbine in the right place produces 1W or 1MW.

More than happy to go nuclear though ... would rather have a modern nuclear plant than a coal monster belching out smoke (not to mention the dreaded carbon dioxide ).

Cheers,
Robin

[sendmyusername]

Scuffers, it was actually freezing as opposed to heating.
Frozen during wind power, stored, then when power needed it is allowed to return to room temperature.
It's very efficient, as it doesn't involve any heating. It takes less energy to freeze, and store cooled.
I wish I could remember the details.
It is about 60% efficient, which isn't great, but as it would only be used when the windmills were producing power that wasn't needed, it is all good. Plus in future developments i'm sure that will improve.
Personally I think hydro is the way to go in scotland.....

[flyingscot68]

Personally I think hydro is the way to go in scotland.....

There's plenty of hydro plants in Scotland, including those that pump the water back up using excess power such a Cruachan. Well worth a visit BTW.
Cheap hydro power is why we had aluminium production in The Highlands all those years ago.

Anyone know what's going on with the gyro storage plans they spoke about a few years back? The plan (I think) was to build huge 1000+ tonne gyroscopes, spin them up using excess power from the wind farms then use them to power generators when required. Sounded feasible but slightly mad

[BiggestNizzy]

The grid watch page shows wind producing 1.9GW right now.

Cheers,
Robin

0.69Gw more power than than a flux capacitor needs

[robin]

Given a choice between living next to a nuclear power plant and a 1000+ tonne flywheel, I'll take the nuclear option, thanks

You can only cool something by heating something else ... so whilst cooling gas to (later) drive a turbine might make more sense than trying to store heat, it probably isn't going to be because you cooled rather than heated; it's more likely to be do with the fact that the compressed gas loses less energy whilst compressed, and is more directly useful for driving the turbine than, say, hot water. Anyway, if you can find the link that describes the scheme it would be interesting.

P.S. Re: the Spanish solar plant, I thought it used liquid sodium to transport the heat from the hot spot to the boilers, rather than liquid salt? Though I can find no mention of that on the web site (but haven't got my glasses on and the print is very small on my screen). Also the cost per MW to build is not a reasonable metric ... the question we should ask is the cost per KWh delivered (to which I don't know the answer, of course).

P.P.S. Hydro as been discussed on here before; I think the challenge is in locating suitable land that has the required terrain to contain the upper and lower reservoirs.

[Corranga]

this was the plan back in the 70's when nuclear was the way forward, and you could then run a nuclear plant 24/7 at it's most efficient usage.

Back then, we had sensible, real engineers comming up with the stratigic way forward, now we have sound-bite politicians, and subsidy hungry industry making a right mess of it.

More than happy to go nuclear though ... would rather have a modern nuclear plant than a coal monster belching out smoke (not to mention the dreaded carbon dioxide ).

For me, these are the 2 most important things in this thread.

The politics, and Greenpeace attitude to power generation is the real problem.
We should go nuclear, using the current infrastructure of wind / hydro etc to allow us to turn the nuclear plant down reducing the wasted energy they produce.

Money should then go into researching better technologies, namely storing, generation and safe nuclear waste disposal instead of continuing to build unpredictable wind farms, and hugely expensive and not very efficient solutions.

Also, this is a world problem, not a localised one. I remember reading a few years back that the UK was demolishing some coal power stations that had technology that was better than many Russian stations that were essentially Victorian in design.
There should be a responsibility to share technologies / old equipment to improve on a global scale..

[Scuffers]

The politics, and Greenpeace attitude to power generation is the real problem.
We should go nuclear, using the current infrastructure of wind / hydro etc to allow us to turn the nuclear plant down reducing the wasted energy they produce..

running a Nuclear plant is a fixed cost no matter if it makes 1Kwh or 100TWh's, the cost of fuel is almost irrelevant, so to run one at less than 100% is pointless - this is why pumped storage was built.

consider that we currently have some 14Gw of installed wind turbine in the UK, now look at what we get from it... and more importantly, when.

Other point is people bang on about de-commissioning costs, when to be blunt, this has always been over-stated and spun out of control by the green lobby, to the point that the new Hinckley point project has had to build in so much money to cover god knows what, the costs start to look silly again.

At the end of the day, Coal is what we should be using, in modern plant, you can argue the CO2 sh*t all you want, and even IF (and it;s a big IF) CO2 is so bad news, the alternatives are NO BETTER in CO2 terms once you account for their cost of build, maintenance, etc.

the problem is that this debate is so highly politicised, the actual reality of it has long been lost.

[campbell]

How dependent is the UK on other nations to supply coal? Mrs Thatcher shut all the mines, I'm told.

Tapatalk. Bringing forums into the Social Media age.

[woody]

How dependent is the UK on other nations to supply coal? Mrs Thatcher shut all the mines, I'm told.

There's a still a few deep mines dotted around the UK as well as quite a number of opencasts. East Ayrshire is an opencast hotspot, but I'm not sure what's left of mines nor working infrastructure following the demise of Scottish Coal.

[robin]

I wouldn't like to increase coal usage - in that sense I agree with the green lobby. We can build quite a lot of nuclear plants before we have to worry about the excess power they produce. When we get close to that point, short term energy buffering solutions make sense - but today, another 10GW of nuclear power plants will just take 10GW of coal/gas out of the mix (preferably coal, IMHO). Our electricity usage is only going to rise - if nuclear can be built cost effectively (i.e. without the triple red tape) we might be able to switch away from other inefficient oil/gas burning activities too.

Or we could try turning off the lights, the computer, the internet, ...

Or we could bury our heads in the sand and build another 1000 wind turbines and pretend it will make a difference.

Cheers,
Robin

[Scuffers]

How dependent is the UK on other nations to supply coal? Mrs Thatcher shut all the mines, I'm told.

There's a still a few deep mines dotted around the UK as well as quite a number of opencasts. East Ayrshire is an opencast hotspot, but I'm not sure what's left of mines nor working infrastructure following the demise of Scottish Coal.

sadly, most of the coal burned these days is imported...

Drax used to have contracts with NZ and AU for coal a few years back, it get's though some 10 Million tonnes a year.

last year I can find figures for is 2012, in which the UK mined some 17M tonnes (6M from deep mine), and imported 45M tonnes.

we have been importing coal since 1970 and in big numbers since 1985, so yes, we are pretty much dependant on imports since Thatcher's war on the NUM.

Not suggesting 100% nuclear is the answer, but if you look at France, even with their horribly inefficient government owned system, their raw electric prices to industry are less than half ours, if we had access to cheap power like they do, the costs to manufacturing would be dramatically reduces and our economy would probably not be in the hole we are in now (as in we would have had more manufacturing at the start of the GFC).

what's happening now is a combination of green sh*t and short-termism, meaning that almost no matter what, we are looking at electric prices doubling in the next 5-8 years and the very real prospect of blackouts.

the only possible light at the end of this tunnel is shale gas, but I bet this get's screwed to the point that it does not make much odds.

[robin]

What we really need is 'Government with Balls' (perhaps not Ed, though ).

Instead of printing money and giving it to the banks (I cannot quite fathom what the banks do with this money, but whatever it is, it doesn't seem to have much impact on the economy), they should shamelessly print money and use it to build 20 nuclear power stations; select an expert in building them as a partner, and select another expert to manage the project costs (none of the usual accountants need apply ) - reward that expert by giving them 50% of any budget savings - keep the results nationally owned so that the state gets the electricity revenue.

I am sure at least 50% of the money spent would find its way into the UK economy, even if we have to partner with a non-UK engineering firm to get the designs done and built properly. The revenue should be ring-fenced to maintaining our generating capacity - so as reactors reach end of life, new ones come on line - set energy prices accordingly.

Pick 20 sites of extreme ugliness (anything left over from the Thatcher shut down era) and put the reactors there.
Given a choice between a decaying steel works and a shiny new reactor + big fat bribe, any local opposition will be limited to the truly green (ignorable, on the whole).

That should get us to about 30-ish GW all day every day; no doubt the power companies would bleat about unfair competition; as a politician I wouldn't be losing much sleep over that, given how popular they are with the general public

The EU might complain about state subsidies, but they can deal with the French before they deal with us

Anything can be done, it just takes the political will to do it.

Cheers,
Robin

[robin]

P.S. Re: shale, I am sure it will all get dragged up and burnt, so we should cut to the chase, let interested parties access it and sell it, but ensure that whoever drags it up and sells it should also remain responsible for repairing the damage, if there is any. As they say there won't be any damage, it should be easy to get them to agree to those terms ... and to be honest the profits they ought to make from it should easily cover a few 100 million set aside for cleaning up some waterways and propping up some buildings, if that did ever happen.

Cheers,
Robin