kuidaskassikaeb wrote: So I really don't understand this.
............ get money from investors and of course THE GUMMINT!kuidaskassikaeb wrote:What these guys seem to want to do is
One method is called pumped storage. At the Dinorwig power station in the UK, for example, water is pumped up into a reservoir on top of the Elidir Fawr mountain during periods of low demand. When energy demand spikes, the water is released down the mountain to drive turbines that feed the electricity grid. It's an extraordinary engineering achievement, housed in 16 kilometres of tunnels threaded through the mountain and capable of supplying 1300 megawatts in 12 seconds.
That power, speed and efficiency - about 80 per cent - is why pumped storage accounts for 99 per cent of the world's energy storage capacity. If every wind and solar farm had its own mountain reservoir, it might be possible to make wind energy a 24/7 resource.
Some plants have turned to air, such as a natural gas plant operated by E.ON Kraftwerke in Huntorf, Germany. Instead of using excess electrical energy to drive water up a hill, they use it to compress and store air in salt caverns about 500 metres below ground. When they need the energy once more, they release the air to drive a turbine. The problem with this method is its efficiency, which rarely exceeds 50 per cent. Pressurising air causes it to heat up, which carries away a lot of the original energy. Then, to expand the compressed air, it must be heated a second time, using up even more energy.
However, air may yet hold the key to energy storage - in liquid form. For the past two years, on a patch of land not much bigger than a basketball court in Slough, UK, a liquid air pilot storage plant has been quietly generating electricity using the excess energy from a neighbouring biomass plant. This tangle of gleaming white pipes and tanks has enough advantages over rival technologies to have been hailed as a critical part of our energy future. "This could save the UK billions," says Tim Fox, head of energy and environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London.
Problem: Wind and solar energy sources simply can't produce power at all times. Energy storage is needed to store energy from the sun and wind when it's produced for use later. No economical, widespread energy storage method currently exists that would allow a substantial portion of the electrical grid's electricty to be supplied by these renewable sources.
Solution: An inexpensive, compressed air energy storage system with 60-70% efficiency could be widely scaled, hopefully enabling terawatts of grid energy storage in the next two decades.
Technology that might make it possible: Water is used to cool air temperature during compression and increase temperature during expansion, making the system more efficient.
This solution is well thought out and considers the response of the fossil fuel markets and companies. A large expansion of renewables will just cause fossil fuel prices to go down to the cost of extraction and processing. Reducing emissions down to 20% of current levels is sustainable. Fossil fuels could only be used for high value purposes,
Quinny wrote:Seems pretty obvious if you are going to store potential energy to smooth inputs a gravity based solution is going to be a hell of a lot easier. Suppose there might be some point solutions, but IMHO totally irrelevant in terms of PO.
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