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Windmills Overload East Europe’s Grid, Risking Blackout

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Re: Windmills Overload East Europe’s Grid, Risking Blackout

#61

Post by mikeash »

celticjames wrote: post #11
TamDenholm wrote: post #3

Theres gunna be big money to the company that can figure out how to store huge masses of energy for months, but no doubt thats decades away. However, is there a more simple solution to this problem, like approaching an industry that already uses masses of energy and seeing if they can encourage them to use the energy when there is overloading? I'm unsure what that industry would be. Surely using an overabundance of e…

There's a great sci-fi novel, The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, set in a post-oil world where tightly wound springs are used to store energy, as we do now with clocks. One of the subplots deals with a character trying to develop a material that can be wound tighter and more compactly without breaking. Or explosively unwinding. I'm not an engineer or physicist, so I've wondered, what is the theoretical limit for st…

The Windup Girl was a good novel but its science was poor, at least when it came to energy. The posited system of generating energy by using large animals to wind up springs is completely ridiculous, even in the semi-post-apocalyptic, heavily bio-engineered future it's set in.

Re: Windmills Overload East Europe’s Grid, Risking Blackout

#62

Post by rayiner »

morsch wrote: post #42
rayiner wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're speaking from the power plant's perspective, but factoring in externalities, natural gas is cheaper to operate than coal. Nuclear is really cheaper. Wind is about the same as coal.

All of the things you state as facts are subject to long-running debates.

Not really. There are debates about his much, but with regard to coal specifically, it's so bad you can ignore things like global warming entirely and it still comes out more expensive.

Re: Windmills Overload East Europe’s Grid, Risking Blackout

#63

Post by thedrbrian »

jivatmanx wrote: post #27
tvladeck wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a bunch of competing technologies: flywheels, water pumps, electric arcs, etc. It's a really interesting space.

Also Pneumatic, which is becoming a big one for cars

The energy density of pneumatic storage are pathetic

Re: Windmills Overload East Europe’s Grid, Risking Blackout

#64

Post by ilaksh »

They just haven't got large scale systems designed and installed for storing power.

Its not impossible. It just wasn't a requirement before so there hasn't been a lot of focus. There are technologies out there right now that would probably work ok. If not, energy storage just needs more focus.

This one looks very promising (http://lightsailenergy.com/tech.html) and I'm sure there are a lot of other viable approaches.

The fact that they have excess power that needs to be stored and then redistributed is GREAT news.

One person mentioned something about needing to store power for months. Obviously, that long time frame is not the requirement.

Re: Windmills Overload East Europe’s Grid, Risking Blackout

#65

Post by vidarh »

redwood wrote: post #26
DasIch wrote: post #25

The real problem here is that the Europe's and specifically Germany's grid is not designed to handle the huge variations imposed my plants using renewable energy. It was designed with nuclear, coal and gas power plants in mind that create relatively constant and easily predictable amounts of energy. This hasn't really been a problem before but with real interest and focus on that problem it will surely be solved and…

Right on: this is an exciting opportunity for grid management. A number of transitions will have to occur: movement toward more peaky-capable baseload generation, probably through natural gas turbines, movement toward storage etc. At the very least it's surprising they aren't pumping water uphill, or just shutting down hydro throughput, in these time periods. Or perhaps Europe's system of hydro electric dams isn't la…

The article covered this:

Southern Germany gets part of it peak loads from Austrian pumped water reservoirs. But this does not solve the problem, as the energy trade between Austria and Germany is hampered by insufficient transmission capacity between the two countries, causing the neigbouring countries networks to take the load.

In other words, it exacerbates the problem rather than fix it.

(another reply explained why this isn't easily done within Germany: Lack of suitable potential reservoirs)

Re: Windmills Overload East Europe’s Grid, Risking Blackout

#66

Post by vidarh »

silvestrov wrote: post #4

It's like the writer doesn't know that windmills can be stopped. In fact, they have builtin brakes which autoengage and stops the mill when the wind becomes too powerful.

The issue is not that they can't be stopped, but that it is not in Germanys interest to stop them. They need the energy, just not in the North where it is produced. They just don't have the North-South transmission capacity, and so the energy flows through neighbouring countries and put their neighbours networks at risk.

As long as their neighbours let them, it's vastly cheaper for Germany to keep this going than to speed up the upgrades of their own transmission capacity.

Re: Windmills Overload East Europe’s Grid, Risking Blackout

#67

Post by vidarh »

jakeonthemove wrote: post #18

That's your problem? Too much energy? Why not create some buffers of sorts - wind energy CAN be stored, you can use it to charge battery banks, extract hydrogen, or even compress air or gas for later use. Obviously, it's not that easy, but it's doable. By the way, all the wind turbines I've seen can rotate their blades 90deg, so they come to an almost full stop if/when necessary.

The actual "problem" is that Germany has pushed things to the breaking point by waiting too long by upgrading their transmission capacity as their generation ability in the North has increased, because they've so far been able to get away with relying on excess transmission capacity from their neighbours.

It's easily fixable in any number of ways. It's a matter of political will (and cost - both investments and potentially in buying their way out of short term obligations to prevent problems this winter), mostly.

Re: Windmills Overload East Europe’s Grid, Risking Blackout

#68

Post by tvladeck »

Gravityloss wrote: post #50
tvladeck wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct, but the problem is tuning the production from wind farms to match demand exactly, in real time, which is what is required to operate the grid. When it comes to renewable energy wind is the hardest in this regard, because production can fluctuate rapidly in very short time scales, especially when there's gusting.

all modern wind turbines have variable incidence blades meaning power regulation can happen on a second timescale. I'm not exactly sure about the electrical machinery, but if that is sophisticated enough, it can be used in high accuracy fashion to control the generation so that the electeicity is produced in high quality. You can think of the wind plant working as a giant flywheel. If there is a sudden gust, the spin…

i'm sure you're correct. i actually don't know the nitty-gritty technical details. i only know wind from a policy perspective. any power source imposes costs on the grid (transmission congestion, ramp rates, supply/demand mismatches, active/reactive power, etc.) and wind is considered almost pathological in every dimension - but i'm sure it's all solvable.

Re: Windmills Overload East Europe’s Grid, Risking Blackout

#69

Post by marbu »

pcl wrote: post #32
redwood wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has a unified grid, I'm sure. We need to remember how small Germany is: smaller than California, for example and California relies on everything hydro from the Pacific Northwest all the way down to mountain western state coal. In anticipation of hot days the Pacific Northwest actually stops water flow on river dams to allow them to peak at high price points. There is probably a middle point here tho: Europe m…

> Germany has a unified grid, I'm sure. The article seemed to indicate that this is not the case, and that until the south and north parts of the grid are well-connected domestically, excess power from the north gets routed south via Poland and the Czech Republic.

Exactly, you can see the up-to date numbers here: http://www.ceps.cz/ENG/Data/Vsechna-data/Pages/Preshranicni-...
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