How much wind energy could be stored last week ? Well, as can be seen above very little. But still we are frequently told that wind energy could be stored and that would be the answer to all our problems.
So the future still lies with fossil fuels or we might actually get real and at least look at nuclear like the French and English have done rather than building a nuclear plant in a panic in 2030 without proper planning and risk assessments.
When we talk about storage, we really mean wind energy stroage, Eamon Ryan of the Irish Green Party means electrical energy from all sources, all mixed up so they cannot be seperated and using fossil fuel to provide the power to store 100% of which only 75% will be retrieved. If low iwnd conditions persist for more than 2 days, there is no stored power and the facitieties will be useless.
ReplyDeleteConsider for a moment if our government did the same to banking as they are doing for electricy generation. They would open two and a half times the existing number of banks, placing some on mountain tops in remote areas with small populations. All managers and staff would have to be paid from the existing pool of depositors and borrowers and shareholders would have to be paid in the same way. The financial regulator would tolerate a situation where those with deposites would have to pay huge interest to have their money minded and they could not withdraw it. While they can go to a competing banks, they all operate under the same policy. Borrowers would have to pay enough interest to keep the show on the road, so mortgage interest would be 2 and 1/2 times above normal. Moreover, Colm McCarthy the UCD economist, the Irish Acadamy of Engineers call for a halt to it while Google's scientists say it is unsustainable. The law for regulating banks and companies is being bye passed and citizens are in the courts trying to get the law compied with. The newly opened banks are paid constrained fees of 142 million per year to stay shut at times when customers are expected to arrive in to make deposites at harvest time. The money is running out and both depositors money and taxpayers money is handed over to finance the every growing bubble. All major industries has writen to the department about escalating electricity prices and the wiser in society are using cash/gold and foreign banks in Switzerland and Iceland. Cadburys announce they are moving to Poland and the Minister announces that for the bankinfg industry, 2 plus 2 can be 3 or 5. When 100 euros is transferred from the Bank of \Ireland to the Akkied Irish Bank, it is counted as profit. Crazy is'nt it, but this is exactly what is happening with our energy policy
ReplyDeleteSorry for he typo errors above. Irish Semi State bodies Bord Na Mona, the ESB and Coilte (forestry company) are diversifying with into wind. They are in competition with each other for state subsidies. Meanwhile the Irish government is selling off its wind portfolio. After the banking collapse, an American chat show host made a laugh of the fact that Irish people were selling parts of the country to each other. Now there is a merry go round in wind energy.
ReplyDeleteIt takes 5 tonnes of water (5,000 litres) falling vertically a distance of 100 meters to produce 1 kwh (domestic unit) of electricity. It takes 5,000 tonnes of water falling the same distance to produce 1 mwh of electricity. If the top lake were 1 meter deep, it would need to be 5,000 square meters in surface area, If round, its diameter would be 80 meters.or if square its side would be 70 meters. To power Ireland's night time demand of 2,000 mw for one hour, the top lake would have contain 5,000 X 2,000 = 10,000,000 tonnes of water for one hour, To meet winter peak demand it would have to contain 25,000,000 tonnes of water with a surface area of 25,000,000 sq meters. So if the lake were circular, its diameter would be 5.643 km. viz: twice the Sq root (25,000,000 /22 X 7). @ 100 meters. For one hour. Mad
ReplyDeleteIf Ireland wants a nuclear power station, particularly if there'll be much protesting against it, Ireland could take a leaf out of Britain's book and build a virtual one, in the form of an interconnector with France, who seem to have lots of their nuclear electricity to spare, as the 2000MW interconnector between England & France seems to run at full whack north almost all the time. Indeed, I see Eirgrid is studying the 700MW Celtic Connector. It's probably a lot quicker & cheaper to build than an actual nuclear station.
ReplyDeleteIts a good point, but my understanding of power engineering is that you would still need a certain amount of "local" power stations to maintain voltage control and you might have an SNSP problem like with EWIC.
DeleteThe idea that building a nuclear plant is expensive is not well grounded, France has some of the cheapest electricity in Europe.