Paw
Well-Known Member
That's a glorified, massive battery, not exactly renewable energy. They open the valves for near instant electric at times of high demand then use off-peak electric to pump the water back up again.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
- Thread starter nashmach
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Burdizzo
Well-Known Member
It's a wonder they can't milk some more juice from it these days?
JohnBoy
Well-Known Member
If you could get away with building one today though they would be amazing with wind power. use the windy day and excess power to fill the battery and run it down on the calm day.
We really really need to get cracking with some offshore wind in this country. we could power half of europe with our offshore wind.
a big problem with depending on nuclear in a small country like ireland is that you don't need many plants, but nuclear plants are quite high maintenance pieces of kit, they need relatively regular and relatively long periods of maintenance downtime. So if you only needed 3 plants to run the country you'd need a 4th just to have the spare capacity to be able to shut one of the 3 down for maintenance. thats 33% extra capacity for one plant to be maintained. it's much less of an issue with bigger countries with more plants.
Paw
Well-Known Member
Was reading on twitter last week about solar parks in Australia getting charged for producing electric during peak production/low demand due to lack of battery storage.
All others? Really, or is it just those peat plants.?
In fairness, even the politicians know we can' t just keep sticking 130metre windmills up out of every hill to supply all our power. Currently, (no pun intended) they have to keep the power coming consistently and the windmills simply cannot do that. So no matter what the windmills are producing, the other power stations are still running. How green is that ? They also need a good bit of maintenance from what i can see
6600
Well-Known Member
Collins had plans to do the same on the Barrow.
you couldn't make it up
WestCorkBoy
Well-Known Member
The plans for an electricity interconnector to Europe are part of the plans to further increase Wind power, when we have surplus we ll export it to Europe when we have a deficit we can import. In a larger network wind is a smaller proportion and less variable as the wind in always blowing somewhere, this makes it easier to accommodate.
The PSO goes to fund all indigenous energy production. 40% (ish off the top of my head) of gas comes from the corrib. Therefore by nature is must be receiving some PSO funding.
Yes, of course it can't produce all the time. I never said it could. What I said is, like @headcase as alluded to is that when you have an excess you store it, and tap in when you need it. Pumped storage for example. Pump the water up a hill when you've extra energy, then let it flow back down the hill when you need it. This drives a turbine which gives you power.
Abother alternative is storing it in the form of hydrogen gas. Use the excess power from wind turbines on the very windy day to make the hydrogen gas, mix it with biogas to make synthetic natural gas use it to drive a gas turbine when needed. Gas from water and cowshite essentially.
Thirdly. Very little maintenance on a turbine. Most of them in Ireland are the more expensive version with no gearbox. The maintenance consists of greasing some nipples, and changing bolts according to the servicemen from Siemens who come out to do it. We met them on a trip from college.
Yes, we are running out of sites. Hence why now is the Time to use whatever sites are left, and then go out to sea when the cost comes down within the next few years. A 200m turbine produces 3 times as much energy as a 100m one.
Cost of electricity is measure by something called the levelised cost of electricity. This basically takes the cost of setting up, running for x amount of years, and decommissioning and divided it by the number of MW you get in that time. Wind is currently substantially less expensive than many other options. A combined cycle gas turbine is one example that is still cheaper than wind, but wind is one of the cheapest now. This takes waste heat from the gas turbine to heat water which drives a steam turbine.
This shows what I believe to be the answer to power generation, wind and gas, with gas made from AD and hydrogen made here in Ireland used in gas turbines used to "plug the gaps" and the rest of the electricity supplied by wind.
Ireland is already joined to Britain, both North and South of the border, and next in the pipeline is the celtic interconnector to join us to France.
There's very little room to manoeuvre actually, they were very well designed at the time. The maths of fluid dynamics hasn't really changed a lot down through the years.
So do you believe they
So what is the best way for me to produce my own power? Can any combination compete with the grid. ?
Bar solar panels for heating water, I don't really see the point of utility scale myself. If you had hilly ground wind turbines maybe.
I don't think utility will ever compete with the grid.
Yeah I meant water not hydrogen, sorry if that wasnt clear.
Burdizzo
Well-Known Member
I must do the Ardnacrushna tour next year. I believe its very good.
headcase
Very Senior Member
I knew what you ment
you wouldn't need to mix it with anything if you ratio it 2 parts H and 1 part O2
clean as a whistle:Whistle2:
Folks.
Couple of quick comments/info on the posts above
The PSO Levy only supports specific forms of generation not all generation. GENERATION included in the PSO Levy has to be approved by the EU, not national government but is put forward by the government of the relevant member state.
Here/below is the breakdown of recipients for the year 2019/2020. - this is publically available information.
A good point above re why not more output from Ardnacrusha @Burdizzo. Do the tour you will enjoy it - it is a marvel from an engineering point of view given when it was constructed.
Head race Originally designed for a fifth or sixth turbine but only 4 turbines installed. In broad terms There are limitations on the maximum drawdown of water from the head race, plus yr round availability of water, average inflows etc. also the head height is in effect fixed from construction, so you will not get big increase in output over and above that which is there from the start.
It was a brave new Ireland that invested in the vision that led to ardnacrusha at the time - it represented such a commitment of the states financial resources.
Couple of quick comments/info on the posts above
The PSO Levy only supports specific forms of generation not all generation. GENERATION included in the PSO Levy has to be approved by the EU, not national government but is put forward by the government of the relevant member state.
Here/below is the breakdown of recipients for the year 2019/2020. - this is publically available information.
A good point above re why not more output from Ardnacrusha @Burdizzo. Do the tour you will enjoy it - it is a marvel from an engineering point of view given when it was constructed.
Head race Originally designed for a fifth or sixth turbine but only 4 turbines installed. In broad terms There are limitations on the maximum drawdown of water from the head race, plus yr round availability of water, average inflows etc. also the head height is in effect fixed from construction, so you will not get big increase in output over and above that which is there from the start.
It was a brave new Ireland that invested in the vision that led to ardnacrusha at the time - it represented such a commitment of the states financial resources.
Attachments
We got it for half nothing because the German currency had collapsed and they needed the foreign currency .
Considering how much rain we get, hydro is a tiny proportion of the like of wind
My father told me a story once while on a Sunday drive by that canal it was dug mostly by hand and that the pay rate was cut ,the Irish workers protested and striked ,the German workers seemingly cut a strip off the blade of their shovels accordingly to the said pay reduction and carried on digging .
I have an old water mill here and investigated cleaning out the pond reopening the head and tail race ,between fisheries Esb. co.council environ
mental impact statement it would have been easier to import uranium and build a mini reactor.
mental impact statement it would have been easier to import uranium and build a mini reactor.