391–400 of 448 posts
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Some countries store energy by pumping water up a dam. Seems efficient.
Very. One of the first was in Scotland. Great to visit as you drive into the mountain and I think one of the Bond files had a scene filmed in it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station
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Can validate. The problem with electricity is that there is no large scale storage like there is for other forms of energy like NG and Crude. Until someone comes along and figures out how to store electricity, this will continue to cause grief to power companies. Power plants are really just options, if the price per kWh is at a certain point then it makes sense to spin up or take down a plant and generate power. Add…
I recall reading a while ago about using molten salt storage at large solar concentrators. Did this ever take off? The theory was you generate excess power during the day and you can use this excess to heat the salt solution which then release thermal energy during the night. Does anyone know more about this? Is this able to meet baseload demand?
In areas with cold weather, one of the most interesting (and underrated, due to only making fossil use more adaptable) developments is the installation of huge, insulated hot water tanks, to make the power generation and the great generation of combined cycle plants individually dispatchable.
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> And that is why it is a huge problem for the power companies It is a problem, but not necessarily in the way you may be thinking. Peak residential power usage is in the evening when solar isn't available. Power companies therefore end up spinning down coal and natural gas during peak solar, then just spinning them back up again as the sun begins to set. [1] So you haven't replaced the coal and natural gas plants, y…
I would propose a global power grid as a solution to this problem, on which the sun would never set. The only problem is that earth is not set up well for this: the Sahara would be the solar workhorse of the planet, and the consumer of all this power would be Hawaii.
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Being a manager at a large power company for 30 years is both an advantage and a disadvantage. For the past 30 years, the energy industry has changed incredibly slowly, so ones expectations of what is possible in the way of innovation is far far lower than it should be. The "duck curve" that your friend is referring to will be solved in a variety of ways, from wind to storage to HVDC interconnects to the rest of the…
> In the future, coal is dead. What about coking coal, for the production of steel from iron ore?
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Flywheels are another option: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
Pumped storage is routinely used to store energy. It's not theoretical. Has Flywheel storage every been seriously used in large-scale commercial applications? Someone mentions it on every energy-storage thread, and I'd like to know if the people suggesting it are just spinning our wheels.
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Very. One of the first was in Scotland. Great to visit as you drive into the mountain and I think one of the Bond files had a scene filmed in it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station
Nope. It was filmed in Switzerland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_Dam
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Pumped storage is routinely used to store energy. It's not theoretical. Has Flywheel storage every been seriously used in large-scale commercial applications? Someone mentions it on every energy-storage thread, and I'd like to know if the people suggesting it are just spinning our wheels.
The JET fusion reactor in Oxfordshire uses flywheels to provide very large pulses of electricity for short periods of time (a minute or two iirc). The reactor requires too much energy to run directly off the National Grid.
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It's very efficient and it's a great solution overall; the only problem is there are only so many dams we can build, since each one requires drowning a valley.
Solution: swimming pool on the roof. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672202/you-deserve-a-house-with...
Could I efficiently use excess solar to pump water in to a house roof storage area and generate electric from that?
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It's very efficient and it's a great solution overall; the only problem is there are only so many dams we can build, since each one requires drowning a valley.
Solution: swimming pool on the roof. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672202/you-deserve-a-house-with...