Re: Dispatchable Wind power??? Interesting article from Energy Pulse.


<dave.walters@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Apr 1, 5:18 pm, "K. Jones" <kjo...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
<dave.walt...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

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On Mar 30, 8:43 am, Joe Strout <j...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <1175266165.708824.262...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

dave.walt...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
The turbine is powered by a revolutionary new compressor. When the
wind blows, lift is created on the turbine blades, spinning the
compressor inside the nacelle. The compressor pumps air to over 100
atmospheres of pressure and sends the air down the tower into an
underground network of high-pressure pipes. The high-pressure
pipeline
network collects and stores 6-12 hours of energy.

Storing energy from intermittent sources like wind certainly makes
sense... but is compressed air really an efficient way to store it?
I'd
expect something like pumped storage to do better -- though I suppose
that requires either a very large water tower, or some sort of natural
variation in elevation. But aren't wind farms often built on ridges
anyway?

Pump storage is limited by geology, basically and many if not most
places have been tapped out already. There is talking of converting
existing reservoirs to pump storage. You see wildly low numbers for
cost on this sort of thing all the time. The best way to do this is to
use wind to directly pump the water instead of wind-to-electric-to-
pump.

In my mind it's all a waste compared to the "simplicity" of nuclear.
Oh well. Just wanted to post this article to give people an idea of
what's being proposed.

David

I like the idea of "flow batteries". Stores power in the megawatt
range...

http://www.vrbpower.com/technology/index.html- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Now that I've read up on them and talked to one of the representives
from Canada (BC) it does seem interesting. More interestringly, is
that they can be applied to nuclear energy as well...assuming they
ever scale it up beyond the small 2 MWs installed they have now. It
would make an interesting compliment to night time full load runs
typical of most nuclear plants.

David

I may be mistaken, but I believe I read an article in the Toronto Star last
fall in which they were building a 30Mw battery for a wind farm
in........Ireland?
I'll see if I can find where I stashed the article.

K. Jones


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