dolanbaker wrote:vtsnowedin wrote:dohboi wrote:Good points, vt. So at best only very marginal use as 'virtual batteries.' But every new source with its own time frame makes it that much less likely that you will have long times with no power at all, and reduces the likelihood that you would need huge actual batteries for such times.
Imagine if you will factories that had to take a one hour break each day at both low and high tide because there was no power available and that these break times would rotate ahead twenty five minutes every calendar day. You could not fire up even a gas plant to cover just that two hours a day so you are forced to have full base load capacity and just let tidal power reduce load and fuel usage when it is on.
It is a pretty interesting engineering problem that is much more complicated then the political and ideological discussions would have you believe.
Have you ever checked the tidal forecasts, you'll see that along many coastlines, the tides are a several minutes different to the next town. With a distributed tidal system and tidal lagoons you can engineer out all the "deadspots".
The largest hurdle to such systems is of course cost!
There are approximately two high and two low tides in the Hudson estuary each day. As the tide rises, a tidal current moves northward up the Hudson.
The time taken for the propagation of this current results in a significant delay between the time of high tide at the Verrazano Narrows and points upstream.
High tide at West Point is a full three hours later than at the Narrows. The propagation is so drawn out that it can be high tide at one part of the length of the Hudson while being dead low at another.
Flow patterns are further complicated by the effects of river channel width and depth on flow velocity.
Consolidated Edison, the iconic utility that provides New York City's electricity, discovered a problem in the summer of 2014. Within a few years, the demand for power in an area spanning parts of Brooklyn and Queens would outpace what existing infrastructure could supply, especially during the peak demand of the hottest summer days.
The traditional solution would be to add a substation. But that would cost $1.2 billion or more and represent a more-of-the-same approach to the electric grid—a central station with long inefficient wires, less resilience to the effects of climate change and more fossil fuel use. Con Ed was not thrilled.
So it came up with a completely different approach. Con Ed solicited ideas for smaller, cheaper, nontraditional and ideally more environmentally friendly solutions. So far, the company has received more than 80 suggestions and has turned many of them into the Brooklyn-Queens Demand Management project.
BQDM, as it's called, is a plan that reimagines the area's grid for 21st century climate changes, especially longer, hotter summers. While the specifics are not fully formed, BDQM is likely to harness state-of-the-art grid management, emissions-free on-site power generation and basic customer-side energy efficiency, which is already going into effect.
The cost: About $200 million, less than one-fifth the price of a substation.
The low price tag and the concept have utilities, regulators, public officials, electricity experts and environmentalists nationwide watching to see whether BQDM will work. The project sets ConEd apart from other big power companies that have fought rooftop solar electricity and other clean energy solutions that disrupt their established business model.
Timo wrote:Ahhhhh! I'm glad you recognized your own lack of faith toward progress. If it doesn't solve everything, it's not worth anything.
I humbly bow to your wisdom.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Hey!! I resemble that remark.Tanada wrote:Timo wrote:Ahhhhh! I'm glad you recognized your own lack of faith toward progress. If it doesn't solve everything, it's not worth anything.
I humbly bow to your wisdom.
Unfortunately I have met a lot of people both in the Peak community and otherwise who hold exactly that position. If you propose a partial solution to any problem they throw up their hands metaphorically because you didn't fix the whole thing in one magical maneuver. We used to have a rather prominent voice on here who was always decrying 'solutions in isolation' because they were piecemeal and make work and would not make BAU continue forever and a day.
News flash, most of us know BAU can not continue forever no matter what you do so crying that solution X only gets you a 10 percent BAU lifestyle is kind of missing the point. If you can deploy solution X and Y and Z in your location and have an acceptable lifestyle while Joe Blow deploys X and Q and M in his location and also has a lifestyle he finds acceptable why is that a bad thing?
dohboi wrote:Did I mention something about managing load up thread?
Lo and behold:
Another $1.2 Billion Substation? No Thanks, Says Utility, We'll Find a Better Way
Consolidated Edison, the iconic utility that provides New York City's electricity, discovered a problem in the summer of 2014. Within a few years, the demand for power in an area spanning parts of Brooklyn and Queens would outpace what existing infrastructure could supply, especially during the peak demand of the hottest summer days.
The traditional solution would be to add a substation. But that would cost $1.2 billion or more and represent a more-of-the-same approach to the electric grid—a central station with long inefficient wires, less resilience to the effects of climate change and more fossil fuel use. Con Ed was not thrilled.
So it came up with a completely different approach. Con Ed solicited ideas for smaller, cheaper, nontraditional and ideally more environmentally friendly solutions. So far, the company has received more than 80 suggestions and has turned many of them into the Brooklyn-Queens Demand Management project.
BQDM, as it's called, is a plan that reimagines the area's grid for 21st century climate changes, especially longer, hotter summers. While the specifics are not fully formed, BDQM is likely to harness state-of-the-art grid management, emissions-free on-site power generation and basic customer-side energy efficiency, which is already going into effect.
The cost: About $200 million, less than one-fifth the price of a substation.
The low price tag and the concept have utilities, regulators, public officials, electricity experts and environmentalists nationwide watching to see whether BQDM will work. The project sets ConEd apart from other big power companies that have fought rooftop solar electricity and other clean energy solutions that disrupt their established business model.
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/04042 ... ate-change
KaiserJeep wrote:The generic term for what you gentlemen are discussing is "pumped storage facility".
dohboi wrote:?
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