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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Apr 9, 2023 21:44:11 GMT
Here's the problem. We could have cheap energy if only we want to use it at certain times of day or times of year. Wind and solar are definitely cheaper than burning hydrocarbons, but we need to store it. For solar you get 10x the energy in the peak of summer as you do in the middle of winter. That's a huge amount of energy to store if you need to store the summer energy for using to heat in winter. You can reduce the storage needs if you configure industry to use the energy when it is plentiful (=cheap) but you don't really win because you really need to run your industry without these constraints or it will become inefficient. So here's the question - how can we store all of this energy and how do we propose to deal with it?
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Post by besoeker3 on Apr 11, 2023 18:24:28 GMT
Here's the problem. We could have cheap energy if only we want to use it at certain times of day or times of year. Wind and solar are definitely cheaper than burning hydrocarbons, but we need to store it. For solar you get 10x the energy in the peak of summer as you do in the middle of winter. That's a huge amount of energy to store if you need to store the summer energy for using to heat in winter. You can reduce the storage needs if you configure industry to use the energy when it is plentiful (=cheap) but you don't really win because you really need to run your industry without these constraints or it will become inefficient. So here's the question - how can we store all of this energy and how do we propose to deal with it? Electricity storage isn't really viable. Power stations, for the most part, use what they use at that point. Wind energy depends on wind energy when/if is available. Nuclear power stations are useful but are generally inflexible There are a few other systems like Dinorweg where they store water power and recycle it for electrical power systems. There are a few systems like that. One I was involved with was a water turbine at a paper mill. It was 500 kW so useful. The mill was around 3,000 MW just to give scale. |
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Post by Pacifico on Apr 11, 2023 21:34:40 GMT
At the current level of technology energy storage is simply too inefficient. One day it might get there but its more likely that technical advancement and innovation will find cheap and plentiful means of continuous production before then.
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Apr 12, 2023 1:39:12 GMT
Here's the problem. We could have cheap energy if only we want to use it at certain times of day or times of year. Wind and solar are definitely cheaper than burning hydrocarbons, but we need to store it. For solar you get 10x the energy in the peak of summer as you do in the middle of winter. That's a huge amount of energy to store if you need to store the summer energy for using to heat in winter. You can reduce the storage needs if you configure industry to use the energy when it is plentiful (=cheap) but you don't really win because you really need to run your industry without these constraints or it will become inefficient. So here's the question - how can we store all of this energy and how do we propose to deal with it? Electricity storage isn't really viable. Power stations, for the most part, use what they use at that point. Wind energy depends on wind energy when/if is available. Nuclear power stations are useful but are generally inflexible There are a few other systems like Dinorweg where they store water power and recycle it for electrical power systems. There are a few systems like that. One I was involved with was a water turbine at a paper mill. It was 500 kW so useful. The mill was around 3,000 MW just to give scale. Wind and solar might end up stupidly cheap, where i can't see nuclear getting any cheaper as it is a mature technology and is already refined.
Without storage that puts a limit on how much wind and solar we can use, so we don't get the full price reduction. We could do a number of things to store it. Remember if everyone is using electricity in their homes to heat in the winter then that' a shit load of energy. Batteries won't do it, although we could convert it to hydrogen, or we could store it as heat. Heat is actually a very cheap and compact way to store energy. I don't think we have many places we can build those hydro storage systems.
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Post by besoeker3 on Apr 12, 2023 9:35:39 GMT
What did you have in mind other than heat storage? |
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Post by besoeker3 on Apr 12, 2023 9:40:30 GMT
What did you have in mind other than heat storage? And even that is limited. |
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Post by Orac on Apr 12, 2023 10:14:59 GMT
Perhaps he means temperature. I can't think how that would work well if he did
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Post by besoeker3 on Apr 12, 2023 10:34:27 GMT
Perhaps he means temperature. I can't think how that would work well if he did Maybe so. Temperature is an instant value. |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Apr 12, 2023 11:34:23 GMT
What did you have in mind other than heat storage? Converting to hydrogen in my mind is the second best option. Hydrogen is dense energy storage. That's 141 MJ/kg. To give you some idea, the same kg of water could never have a potential energy of 141 MJ on earth because at 60MJ it would be in out of space. The trouble with it is the combustion efficiency is only about 40-45%. If you recovered electricity from heat at 1700C you would get about 85%. |
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Post by besoeker3 on Apr 12, 2023 12:30:23 GMT
What did you have in mind other than heat storage? Converting to hydrogen in my mind is the second best option. Hydrogen is dense energy storage. That's 141 MJ/kg. To give you some idea, the same kg of water could never have a potential energy of 141 MJ on earth because at 60MJ it would be in out of space. The trouble with it is the combustion efficiency is only about 40-45%. If you recovered electricity from heat at 1700C you would get about 85%. I wonder how much of a risk it would be? Sometimes there are no easy options. Pumped-storage hydroelectricity is the most common technique of electrical grid storage but it relatively peanuts in the UK. For that you need to have Itaibu ot The Three Gorges River in China. I knew you would like that one...................  |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Apr 12, 2023 12:58:44 GMT
Converting to hydrogen in my mind is the second best option. Hydrogen is dense energy storage. That's 141 MJ/kg. To give you some idea, the same kg of water could never have a potential energy of 141 MJ on earth because at 60MJ it would be in out of space. The trouble with it is the combustion efficiency is only about 40-45%. If you recovered electricity from heat at 1700C you would get about 85%. I wonder how much of a risk it would be? Sometimes there are no easy options. Pumped-storage hydroelectricity is the most common technique of electrical grid storage but it relatively peanuts in the UK. For that you need to have Itaibu ot The Three Gorges River in China. I knew you would like that one................... Sand is really cheap stuff and at 1700C it would contain 1.4MJ of energy per kg. The loss of that heat over time is directly proportional to the surface area. as you scale it, the energy storage increases by d^3, but the losses increase by only d^2 giving you a storage time that increases as you make the thing bigger. That's so simple eh? To make it better you make it big. There are other tricks you can do as well to keep the heat in.
Of course the UK is too bloody stupid to think of this, so we are being up-staged by the Americans and the Germans. Sand does not blow up like hydrogen tanks or lithium batteries, nor does it wear out or even run out.
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Post by besoeker3 on Apr 12, 2023 13:23:45 GMT
I wonder how much of a risk it would be? Sometimes there are no easy options. Pumped-storage hydroelectricity is the most common technique of electrical grid storage but it relatively peanuts in the UK. For that you need to have Itaibu ot The Three Gorges River in China. I knew you would like that one................... Sand is really cheap stuff and at 1700C it would contain 1.4MJ of energy per kg. The loss of that heat over time is directly proportional to the surface area. as you scale it, the energy storage increases by d^3, but the losses increase by only d^2 giving you a storage time that increases as you make the thing bigger. That's so simple eh? To make it better you make it big. There are other tricks you can do as well to keep the heat in.
Of course the UK is too bloody stupid to think of this, so we are being up-staged by the Americans and the Germans. Sand does not blow up like hydrogen tanks or lithium batteries, nor does it wear out or even run out.
Sand is cheap stuff. Heat it to 1700C and that is not cheap. I thought you might have understood that instead of denigrating the Brits. Do the Germans heat their sand yo 1700C? Do the Chinese? |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Apr 12, 2023 13:38:15 GMT
Sand is really cheap stuff and at 1700C it would contain 1.4MJ of energy per kg. The loss of that heat over time is directly proportional to the surface area. as you scale it, the energy storage increases by d^3, but the losses increase by only d^2 giving you a storage time that increases as you make the thing bigger. That's so simple eh? To make it better you make it big. There are other tricks you can do as well to keep the heat in.
Of course the UK is too bloody stupid to think of this, so we are being up-staged by the Americans and the Germans. Sand does not blow up like hydrogen tanks or lithium batteries, nor does it wear out or even run out.
Sand is cheap stuff. Heat it to 1700C and that is not cheap. I thought you might have understood that instead of denigrating the Brits. Do the Germans heat their sand yo 1700C? Do the Chinese? Since I had the courtesy of explaining my reasoning, can't you have the courtesy of doing likewise rather than start an attack on me. |
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Post by besoeker3 on Apr 12, 2023 14:10:20 GMT
Sand is cheap stuff. Heat it to 1700C and that is not cheap. I thought you might have understood that instead of denigrating the Brits. Do the Germans heat their sand yo 1700C? Do the Chinese? Since I had the courtesy of explaining my reasoning, can't you have the courtesy of doing likewise rather than start an attack on me. I have given you explicit answers. Now why does Germany not use energy from hot sand? |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Apr 12, 2023 14:25:13 GMT
Since I had the courtesy of explaining my reasoning, can't you have the courtesy of doing likewise rather than start an attack on me. I have given you explicit answers. Now why does Germany not use energy from hot sand? You told me it is expensive to heat sand to 1700C. I disagree. You would get 100% efficiency converting from electrical energy into heat and you can do it via simple ohmic heating. If you make a claim it is expensive, then don't expect me to just take your word for it. I don't consider you as a a reliable reference. |
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