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Australia is not Denmark. The Land of Oz may not be poised for wind power to economically contribute a sizable fraction of its electrical generation, especially considering the low price of Australian coal.
Link tinyurl.com/p783pv
Glenn, does the information in the article appear to be accurate?
Link tinyurl.com/p783pv
Glenn, does the information in the article appear to be accurate?
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Wed, August 19, 2009 - 3:04 AMWell, I'll tell you what. Although I wish I knew everything, I really don't. Australia represents one of those areas where my knowledge is short. My knowledge ends at mostly dessert, six states, two territories and the capital is Canberra. With some effort, I might be able to name the states. Beyond that, I'm totally lost :-)
However, a quick scan of the article shows the old bugaboo about variation in output from wind power. This is not unfounded, and tends to require backing up by either storage or by the presence of other, dispatchable, loads and generators. What is meant by "dispatchable" is that it is possible to change the level of consumption or output (depending on whether it is a load or generator) in real-time.
The usual means of storing electricity is with a pumped-storage plant, but if the land is mostly dessert, the implication is that water may be hard to come by. Seawater could be used, but poses a whole new set of problems on the basis that it is corrosive.
Given that Australia is mostly dessert (a possibly incorrect assumption on my part), it would seem that solar would be a far better way to go, but it looks, from the article, like they are having political issues going that way.
Incidentally, a night-time satellite photo of Australia shows most of the population forming a ring around the outside of the continent. (See: www.unisa.edu.au/barbaraha...ricity.asp ) Even Tasmania (the island in the lower-right of the photo, which is northwest on an Australian map) is only lit in a few areas. This tends to back the assumption that the rest is dessert. -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Wed, August 19, 2009 - 11:24 PMThanks.
BTW, most of the population is in the J-shaped area comprising the East coast, just East of the Great Dividing Range--plus Melbourne (SSE). The climate in this area ranges from temperate in the South to tropical in the North.
There's also just over 1 million people in Perth, on the West coast. The climate there is Mediterranean, like Los Angeles.
You're right about the Mad Max country of the interior. That may be partially due the rain-shadow effect of the Great Dividing Range, aka the Eastern Highlands.
Since water is a big issue in the Southern half of the country, I wouldn't expect hydro to be sufficient as quick backup power for some big future network of windfarms.
Now here's my stoopid question of the day. What kinds of power plants could respond quickly enough to dips in windfarm output? Hydro in a rainy, mountainous region probably could. What about coal-fired plants? Natural gas-fired power plants? Nuclear?
If we had an extensive network of windfarms in a drier-than-average part of the US--the windswept plains of Southern Wyoming, for example-- what kind of backup would they need? If the answer is natural gas, then wouldn't we be SOL when production of this particular fossil fuel starts declining in the near future?
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Thu, August 20, 2009 - 3:00 AMSome steam plants can change their output pretty quickly (they are called "dispatchable"), but cannot go on/off line quickly. They can get their steam from coal/oil (any grade)/gas/nuclear and maybe eventually solar (I'm thinking with a brine store)? Steam turbines don't really care where the steam comes from.
Gas turbines can come on line quickly but can't shift their output much -- they're pretty much either on or off. They run on gas or jet fuel (which you may hear referred to as kerosene in the industry, but it differs from the kerosene you would use in a heater).
I know of (and have seen up close; put my hand on) a hydro in New York that can go from completely off to 270 MW (times four generators totaling just over 1 GW) in 90 seconds, which is faster than any gas turbine can come on line, and they are also dispatchable. But, as we've said, hydro is not really viable for Oz.
As for being SOL . . . well, solar with brine stores give me a lot of hope. I also would want to see more private (specifically, domestic) installations with grid-tie *and* battery backing. I really very strongly believe that the solution to the problems we are trying to solve is not to be found in one technology, but a portfolio of them. -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, August 21, 2009 - 11:57 AMTwo more stoopid questions. Which is more efficient at converting chemical energy into electrical energy: gas turbines or steam plants? In steam plants, is that efficiency essentially constant at all settings? -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Sat, August 22, 2009 - 3:34 PMThe efficiency is not constant; there is usually a "sweet spot" somewhere in the input/output curve.
Steam turbines are *generally* more efficient than gas turbines, as well as more flexible.
That said, there is a type of unit called a "combined cycle" unit, where the exhaust from a gas turbine is used to generate steam to run a steam turbine in parallel. The have the gas turbine's limitations (i.e. they must run on jet fuel or natural gas, and are not dispatchable, AFAIK), but they have the ability to reach a much higher efficiency than either.
Essentially, the fraction of the rejected energy from the gas turbine equal to the steam turbine's efficiency gets recovered. For example, if the gas turbine is 25% efficient (i.e. it rejects 75% of the energy as heat), and the steam turbine is 33% efficient, then the steam turbine would recover 33% of the 75% of the energy that was rejected by the gas turbine, which would yield an additional 25% efficiency, making the complete unit around 50% efficient.
Don't take those percentages as gospel; they are for example only, and will vary by make, model and age.
The reason gas turbines are generally useful is that they can come on-line fast, and are (comparatively) compact. -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Sat, August 22, 2009 - 9:23 PMNow, if the steam turbine's 'off gas' could be mixed with the gas turbine's 'off gas', it could reduce the air pollution amount. -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Sun, August 23, 2009 - 4:54 AMWhat do you mean by 'off gas'?
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Sun, August 23, 2009 - 11:51 AMThe fumes or bi-products of the process -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Mon, August 24, 2009 - 2:10 AMOh, I see. You would like to see the carbon from the CO2 recombine with the hydrogen from the water. Yeah, that would be cool, but we'd have a thermodynamic problem :-(
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Wed, August 19, 2009 - 11:37 PMCheck out this article in a Discover magazine from last year:
discovermagazine.com/2008/oc...he-world
This is a large-scale chemical battery using vanadium invented by an Australian woman.
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 16, 2009 - 12:02 AMThe article is most probably accurate if it is using actual .power delivered to the grid.
Firstly it just says the wind patterns are the same across the SE corner (where the greater majority live). Not surprising as our weather patterns travel from west to east. What Perth (sw cnr) has one day, Sydney (lower mid east coast) has 24-48 hours later. (Hmm, wonder why they can not predict likely output?)
Also says they are gusty and patchy in June, which is probably the same year around. There is no bicycle touring guide in Australia that seriously says only ride this route this way. So wind is not a full time feature at ground level anywhere.
Hydro storage just isn't practical. apart from the country's map of fault lines looking like very old and greatly cracked vinyl, There just isn't the water falling to create and maintain the pondage.
Our snowfield area had major bush fires a few years ago and when, in later years the water didn't come out of almost record snowfalls, they finally worked out that it wasn't reaching the dams for the Snowy Hydro Scheme as the trees were drinking deep and regrowing.
Coal is definitely the backbone of power generation.
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 16, 2009 - 3:35 AMI think that this west to east weather travel pattern is global, caused by the earth's rotation. When I was at university, some 500km west of where I grew up, my father used to phone me every now and then to find out what the weather was so that he could prepare accordingly. -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 16, 2009 - 7:43 AMThe real joke is that currently the australian weather forecasters are focussed on events in the Pacific Ocean (east of Australia) to predict the overall likelihood of rain.
At least a few are now looking west to the Indian Ocean, so these projectins might improve a bit, especially for Northern Australia.
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 16, 2009 - 7:02 AMThere is so much open country in Australia that they really ought to be looking at wind and solar. -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 16, 2009 - 7:52 AMYes, but it is basically flat, which is why there isn't consistent winds (the main complaint in the paper).
The ideal wind generator location is the tops of the Andes or the Rocky mountains. The places where mountains intersect the high altitude winds that blow almost non stop.
Also, people tend not to live in the open country, but along the coast. Much of the east coast is effectively in a wind shadow from the Great Dividing Range that runs up it about 10-100kms west of the coast.
A government subsidy of $AUS8,000 to install PV on your roof was too popular, so they stopped it sooner than expected.
The real problem with solar is that there isn't an economical energy storage device available.
The other problem is that PV panels are far too expensive. There are too many subsidies around for too limited production. Globally we need about another five factories. -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Sat, October 17, 2009 - 5:19 AMThere is a flywheel-based energy storage project being built in eastern Columbia County, New York (can't quite remember the name of the township where it will be located) and the same company is also looking to build one in Gloversville, NY (which, if I recall right, is southern Fulton County). These will, obviously, be the early adopter projects, but that says to me that the goofy prototype stage is nearly over. -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Sat, October 17, 2009 - 8:04 PMMy stoopid question of the day: When you're not using them to generate electricity, what is the energy half-life of state-of-the-art flywheels that have been set in motion be windmills? There's gotta be some frictional loss, and I have no idea how big that is. -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Sun, October 18, 2009 - 5:22 AMIt's not a stupid question. Alas, I don't have the answer, however, I do still have Friday's newspaper which had the article about it.
That said, all energy storage techniques are lossy in some way. Our nearest pumped-storage plant loses about 33% of what it stores, though I have been told that more efficient designs exist now than when it was built in the 60's, most of which involve bringing the tubes down diagonally (something they didn't have the engineering prowess to do when the plant was built) rather than down then horizontally.
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Mon, October 19, 2009 - 5:23 PMThis is the article from the Schenectady Gazette:
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PSC OKs energy storage project
STEPHENTOWN -- The New York State Public Service Commission granted Stephentown Regulation Services the authority to construct and operate an energy storage project in Stephentown in eastern Rensselaer County.
The PSC also said Thursday that the company qualified for lightened regulation because "it will sell its regulation services in the competitive wholesale market." The PSC also approved financing for the project up to a maximum amount of $69.3 million in federal loans, private investments, inter-company financing and private offerings.
Commission Chairman Garry Brown said the facilities will improve electricity use. "The facility's flywheels are designed to store excess energy when the generated power supply exceeds demand and conversely deliver it back to the grid when demand exceeds supply," he said. "This project will help fully utilize electricity generated from renewable power sources, which is often generated at times when demand is low."
The facilities will be installed at a seven-acre site adjacent to electric transmission facilities owned and operated by National Grid, and electric distribution facilities owned and operated by New York State Electric and Gas.
Stephentown Regulation is a subsidiary of Tyngsborough, Mass.-based Beacon Power Corp., which is seeking to build a similar stored-energy facility in Glenville.
----------8<--------cut------------------
Okay, so I remembered wrong. Glenville, not Gloversville and Rensselaer County, not Columbia County. Glenville is in northern Schenectady County, not far from where I live. -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Tue, October 20, 2009 - 1:53 AMSo there may be potential for flywheels that are accelerated by direct earth forces like magnetic or ley lines. -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 23, 2009 - 10:44 PMActually yes, AFAIK, all current flywheels are accelerated by magnetic forces, from electric motors.
Not sure what magnetic fields you think the earth can provide. basic theory of electro-magnetism says that a wire has to move through the lines of magnetism to generate electricity. AFAIK, the only design ever proposed has been the oft featured sky tower rising from the surface to geostationary(sort of) orbit which cuts through solar radiation effects around the earth.
The problem with ley lines is that they are a totally imaginary entity. I think I'd prefer to keep tinkering in my garage on the fusion break down of water to create hydrogen that tryng to use ley lines.
so the only design e
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Sun, October 25, 2009 - 5:14 AMLike I said, "Uh... no."
The flywheels introduce no new source of energy, only a new possibility for storing it. They bring nothing to the table that is not brought by batteries or pumped storage, except for the fact that they can be put anywhere (versus pumped storage) and are possibly less expensive to build (versus batteries). Beyond that, if you can get energy to it, it can store it. It has nothing to do with "direct earth forces" or any of the other fictional free energy mumbo jumbo.
Reminder: Force is force; energy is energy. Force is not energy and energy is not force. Energy cannot be acquired for free; it can only be converted.
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 30, 2009 - 5:41 AMFlywheels are not cheaper than batteries, otherwise there would be more of them around.
Forty years of research and development and so far I've only heard of one niche use of flywheels. -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 30, 2009 - 8:36 AMbeacons web site has a cool short video showing off their flywheels. www.beaconpower.com/products...gy-25.asp
go down to the middle of the page and click "from flywheel to full scale plant"
they have floating magnetic bearings (no friction), spin up to 16,000 rpm, have a life span of at least 20yrs, and are not made of metal.
pretty cool -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 30, 2009 - 8:40 AMoh yea, and they are sealed in a vacuum.
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 30, 2009 - 9:46 AMInteresting design. It seems perfectly suited to be installed in the base of large scale wind towers. I wonder if there's any company trying to develop a wind turbine / flywheel system? -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 30, 2009 - 9:28 PMUseful if you can get significant night time winds for some peculiar reason, but otherwise not practical.
Basic economics is that selling electricity during the day brings the highest price; retail here 25c+/kwh Vs 15c/kwh overnight when coal fired power stations are just humming over.
Given the premise of unreliability in wind power generation, it seems you would be compounding one risky investment with another risky investment.
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 30, 2009 - 9:46 PMThanks for that.
So they have moved to carbon fibre construction. This makes a lot of sense as AFAIK, it is about the strongest economic tensile material.
Does anyone have any details of how to build you own bearings or how they recover the energy? -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 30, 2009 - 9:48 PMaah, motor attached to shaft. -
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Sat, October 31, 2009 - 4:34 AMIn theory, there's no reason why you couldn't build a motor/generator out of a flywheel, using the flywheel itself or a parallel construct on the same shaft as the rotor for said motor/genertor, and still have it suspended on one set of magnetic bearings, with the whole thing operating in a vacuum. I would be very surprised if this is not what they are doing (haven't looked at the site).
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Re: Wind power in Australia?
Fri, October 23, 2009 - 10:35 PMFlywheels; umm, in the last forty years, flywheel design has advanced to an extremely narrow and exceedingly small niche market; basically buildings with power demand that must be 99.9999999....% reliable. aka better than a UPS. (do not ask about efficency).
The big problem has been that to get sufficient power stored into the flywheel it has to be either humugous ( woops major bearing demands and problems) or running at extreme revs (hope to diety that it doesn't explode).
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