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Power Supply Options 5

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owg

owg

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Sep 2, 2001
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Is there a place on Eng-Tips where power supply options for the Earth are discussed? It looks like nuclear will be out of favour for a few decades and it is hard to take wind and solar seriously as major reliable components of a supply mix. Natural gas seems to be in favour in spite of its generation of CO2.

HAZOP at
 
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cranky108 states:
"natural gas generation isn't fast enough to back up wind power"
I have no experience in this area but I thought a gas turbine would speed up quite quickly. I do have experience running equipment on the end of a long natural gas pipeline and there is no more reliable source of energy. Almost everything can be down but the pipeline unpacks as required.

HAZOP at
 
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grid monitoring/control systems should bring reserve gensets online as required. Here in SW Minnesota, we have in the neighborhood of 3000 ~1.6 MW and larger wind units, no blackouts or brownouts unless due to a localized line or equipment failure.
 
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No, it's not fast enough for when everyone in England goes to make a cup of tea during the half time of the FA cup final.

That's why 'pump store' power-plants exist as I recall it.

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pumped storage is essentially hydro-power, except not always built on an active stream. Since it generally requires building a reservoir on a high promentory, it requires a suitable geographic location, generally requiring extensive permitting and hopefully near the grid. In addition, usually requires a dam which brings it's own risk and permitting requirements. See link below for a notable pumped storage project and dam failure...

 
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From what I recall the time it takes for wind to go from maximum output to overspeed shutdown is less than a minuite. So when you can pickup over 100 MW in less than a minuite then gas will be fast enough.

I'm not sure pumped Hydro is any faster than gas units. I do know of hydro units than take over two minuites to open the needle valve, and maybe some time to come on line. But pumped hydro is a good idea to store peak wind.

Right now wind is so small it dosen't rock the grid that much. but with more farms it will get to a criticle point, if things continue the way they are.

Only the short term storage technologys can smooth out wind to work with either gas or pumped hydro. but no wind farm I've seen has added those.
 
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ahhhh. You guys can all save the brain power and take energy from Canada. Over here we generate much more than we consume on a regular bases then give it away for free to the US.
Come one come all !
[upsidedown]

[peace]
Fe
 
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I glad I'm not an air traffice controller or a GRID OPERATOR...

Regards,

Mike

(mauricestoker, how 'bout those flashlights you shake, could be adapted, hey?)
 
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I've often thought that geothermal was an understudied source of power - if you drill deep enough, it's hot everywhere.

Perhaps something could be done with the thermocline in the ocean. Stirling engines operate on low temperature deltas - perhaps pumping cold water up from the ocean floor in conjunction with a solar collector would be a viable source of power in tropical regions.
 
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flash, I hinted at one issue with geothermal, it can have seismic effects etc. I believe they stopped work on one in Switzerland for this reason.

However, it does still seem to me underutilized.

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IMHO, i think we're not learning the right lessons ...

1) Japan ... the lesson learnt seems to be "nuclear bad", but i htink the lesson should be "pressurised water reactors are problematic, maybe we should look into new design concepts ... pebble reactors"

2) energy sources ... if petroleum based energy is so bad, shouldn't we be encouraging India and China to develop their economies along electrical lines (which we see more/better future potential) rather than developing our (bad) petroleum based economy ? Instead, we're encouraging the to burn as much petroleum as they can get their hands on ('cause they're a developing economy and blah, blah, blah).

3) Renewable energy ... sure there are some places where sunlight/wind are reliable sources, but not as widespread as they're being applied.

4) Alternative energy ... biomass maybe, corn (foodstocks) doesn't sound like a great idea (in a world that's hungry), wave/tidal/geothermal ... niche apps (at best) ... SPS ? (Solar Power Satelites).
 
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Stop holding out hope for any single technological fix, folks- it ain't gonna happen.

Want to know the future? It'll be more of the same, plus some new stuff (but only gradually). And it will cost more.
 
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