On 6 Jul, 16:44, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:



On Jul 6, 5:34 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

On 5 Jul, 22:52, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 5, 11:57 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

1. Pumped Storage: There is a lot of potential for pumped storage in
Norway - probably 10s of GW days. And the alps have a lot of hydro
which can be enhanced to pumped storage. Currently this is used follow
demand with a nuclear base. But it can also inversely follow wind
supply.

The problem with pumped storage operations outside of the wind driven
grid is that of simple economics. Why will the operator choose to buy
wind generated power when there is considerable excess of french
nuclear baseload power for sale? The operator can maximize revenues
by pumping with cheap excess baseload,and selling at peak rates. The
operator can even get a discount from the baseload plant, if he allows
the supplier to cut the power at short notice (turning the pumped
storage operation into spinning reserve).

Obviously there isn't enough French baseload to go around.

The French have a problem with all of their nuclear power being slow
to respond to demand changes. If there is a lot more pumped storage
built, they can price their power to have the pumped storage operators
follow loads for them.

Economical ways of storing electrical energy will kill wind, dead, for
any grid connected purpose; unless someone decides that money is no
object.

If there were a perfect way to store electricity, and an efficient
market, the power source with the lowest average cost would win. No
one knows whether in 12 years wind or nuclear will be cheaper, but it
looks like we'll get both.

Nuclear power is cheaper, now.

Yes, but now is not the issue - all Western nuclear power has long
since amortised its build costs.

On a purely economic basis, the
nearest rival to nuclear is coal. Where wind has not been subsidized,
it is not built.

You could say the same about nuclear, though I'm fairly optimistic
about the new builds.

Where subsidies dry up, the wind turbines stop spinning.

You mean stop being built

What you are suggesting is that some unspecified
developement will reduce the cost of wind power-- without reducing the
cost of anything else

On shore wind is cost competitive. But like nuclear, its capacity is
limited. We haven't built any large scale offshore wind farms yet, but
I'd expect their cost to fall with scale.

Until then, the power source with the lowest marginal cost has a role
for baseload power. Nuclear has low marginal cost, but wind is even
lower.

Can you prove that?

The wind may be free, but you still have to maintain the wind turbines.

Not on a day to day basis you don't. Most wind turbines are left
unmanned for weeks at a time.

Nuclear power plants need a lot of maintenance and fuel.

'Windfarm output is never zero. Sometimes it's less'

By Lewis Page

Fresh contenders have entered the UK wind power debate, as a turbines
expert funded by the Renewable Energy Foundation publishes an
investigation into a hotly-disputed subject - the variability in output
to be expected of a large UK windfarm base.

In a just-released article for the journal Energy Policy, titled Will
British weather provide reliable electricity?, consulting engineer Jim
Oswald and his co-authors model the output to be expected from a large,
25+ gigawatt UK windfarm collection of the type the government says it
would like to see in service by 2020. Wind is generally seen as the
renewable technology best suited to the UK climate, and so it forms the
bulk of most renewables plans for Blighty.

One of the most frequent criticisms levelled at wind power is
variability. That is, when the wind drops (or blows too hard) the
windmills stop spinning and you get no power.

simulates the output rises and falls that might result from a lot of
windfarms distributed around the UK by using Met Office archived data
from different points up and down the land. Many wind advocates have
argued that with enough windfarms, widely enough distributed, you would
get more reliable power output as some windmills would always have wind.

Oswald's analysis says this isn't true, with calm conditions across
pretty much all the UK being fairly regular events.

     Analysis from 1996 to 2005 shows similar results: large, rapid, and
frequent changes of power output being common occurrences ... any
national power system has to manage under the worst case conditions
likely to occur ... These are not extreme cases, whose frequency is so
low as to render the events negligible. Rather, these are representative ....

If the government succeeds in building its mighty 25 gigawatts of wind
base by 2020, according to Oswald's Met Office data-based model its
output will dip to pretty much nothing fairly routinely.

The next line of defence for wind advocates is normally the idea of
hooking up the UK's grid with high-capacity links to those of other
European nations, creating a "Supergrid" with wind so widely spread that
output would be sure to even out. But Oswald has bad news for that idea,
too. He compares his modelled UK big-wind output with that which has
been produced in recent times by other European wind bases, particularly
the substantial German/Danish one.

Read the rest of the article here:http://tinyurl.com/6gsodb

Wind Power is still not a mature technology - the largest wind farms
in operation are only several hundred MW of capacity. That puts them
with early PWR designs in terms of maturity.

On Jul 7, 2:44 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:



Wind Power is still not a mature technology - the largest wind farms
in operation are only several hundred MW of capacity. That puts them
with early PWR designs in terms of maturity.

How do you define mature?

It is not merely a matter of size. A mature technology is where all
of the black art has been codified to the point that you can stick
performance numbers and constraints into a formula and crank out a
design. Wind power has more constraints, so the result is not
particularily desirable, but that does not make it less mature.

More relevant is the production technology. I presume you can model a

Every component of wind power, taken in isolation, is mature. Towers
are mature. Airfoils are mature. Generators are mature. Even power
electronics are mature. I fail to see how you can consider wind power
to be less than a mature technology. They have been building wind
turbines for power production for seventy years, and then some. How
can it not be mature?

On 11 Jul, 17:48, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 10, 4:14 pm, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

On 8 Jul, 08:06, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 7, 2:44 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Wind Power is still not a mature technology - the largest wind farms
in operation are only several hundred MW of capacity. That puts them
with early PWR designs in terms of maturity.

How do you define mature?

It is not merely a matter of size. A mature technology is where all
of the black art has been codified to the point that you can stick
performance numbers and constraints into a formula and crank out a
design. Wind power has more constraints, so the result is not
particularily desirable, but that does not make it less mature.

More relevant is the production technology. I presume you can model a
wind turbine in a CAD package, but what's equally important is how
cheaply you can build it, erect it and maintain it. That's partly a
matter of numbers - we won't see benefits till wind farms are 200 x
5MW.

Every component of wind power, taken in isolation, is mature. Towers
are mature. Airfoils are mature. Generators are mature. Even power
electronics are mature. I fail to see how you can consider wind power
to be less than a mature technology. They have been building wind
turbines for power production for seventy years, and then some. How
can it not be mature?

Good question. Significant research has been going into wind turbines
since about 1990 - less than 2 decades compared with six decades for
nuclear power.

People started building wind generators at about the same Chadwick
discovered the neutron. It was still very immature, so nothing much
came of it. More experimental units were built by the time it was
known that a sustained fission reaction was possible. It was touted
as the next Big Thing after the first oil shock. According to my
memory, that was in the early to mid 1970's.

The maturity of a technology is independent of both scalability, and
economic viability.

I would suggest its closely linked - more so than the age of the
technology.

More importantly, when a set of technologies becomes mature, the
performance gains tend to level off. Petrol engined cars haven't
improved that much in the last five years, but watch what happens to
electric cars in the next five years.

Electric cars predate petrol engined cars. Except for range, the
early ones tended to outperform the early petrol engined cars (max
speeds exceeding 100 km/h). The only immature technology is an
inexpensive, light weight, energy-dense storage system. Platinum
catalyst fuel cells were mature when they went to the Moon, but are
rather pricey for an econobox people mover. Thanks to the usefulness
of battery-powered electric forklifts (where a four thousand pound
battery is a desireable feature, not a bug), electric vehicles are
very mature.

Electric cars are not mature at all. GM is spending 100s of millions
trying to figure the best way of configuring one.

Yes - apart from the batteries, most of the needed technologies are
reasonably mature but no one* has yet integrated them into an
effective electric car - but expect several to arrive in 2010.

*Except Tesla, but at huge cost, because of the immaturity of the
technologies.

Wind energy is in the early stages of development so the economies of
scale haven't yet been exploited and the learning curve is still
steep.

No. Wind produced electricity is in the early stages of
exploitation. The early stages of developement happened seven, or
eight decades ago. The early stages of non-electrical wind power go
back a few millenia.

The early stages of development happened 70-80 years ago and are still
going on.

And not all the technologies are mature. The aerofoils are pretty new
stuff. Carbon fibre is being used extensively in airframes for the
first time and turbine blades are longer, and more stressed, then
aircraft wings.

Airfoils are pretty new? Explain that to Bernoulli, Lillienthal, and
the Wright brothers. Not to mention thousands of years of kite
flyers. Turbine blades are stressed differently than wings, but the
design of both benefit from the maturity of aerodynamics and
structural engineering.

THE Airfoils are pretty new. By that I mean 80m long carbon fibre
airfoils.

You seem to want wind turbines to be immature, so that there still
exist great leaps forward in performance, but wishing does not make it
so.

Of course - don't you?

On Jul 11, 11:00 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk
wrote:





On 11 Jul, 17:48, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 10, 4:14 pm, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

On 8 Jul, 08:06, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 7, 2:44 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Wind Power is still not a mature technology - the largest wind farms
in operation are only several hundred MW of capacity. That puts them
with early PWR designs in terms of maturity.

How do you define mature?

It is not merely a matter of size.  A mature technology is where all
of the black art has been codified to the point that you can stick
performance numbers and constraints into a formula and crank out a
design.  Wind power has more constraints, so the result is not
particularily desirable, but that does not make it less mature.

More relevant is the production technology. I presume you can model a
wind turbine in a CAD package, but what's equally important is how
cheaply you can build it, erect it and maintain it. That's partly a
matter of numbers - we won't see benefits till wind farms are 200 x
5MW.

Every component of wind power, taken in isolation, is mature.  Towers
are mature.  Airfoils are mature.  Generators are mature.  Even power
electronics are mature.  I fail to see how you can consider wind power
to be less than a mature technology.  They have been building wind
turbines for power production for seventy years, and then some.  How
can it not be mature?

Good question. Significant research has been going into wind turbines
since about 1990 - less than 2 decades compared with six decades for
nuclear power.

People started building wind generators at about the same Chadwick
discovered the neutron.  It was still very immature, so nothing much
came of it.  More experimental units were built by the time it was
known that a sustained fission reaction was possible.  It was touted
as the next Big Thing after the first oil shock.  According to my
memory, that was in the early to mid 1970's.

The maturity of a technology is independent of both scalability, and
economic viability.

I would suggest its closely linked - more so than the age of the
technology.

Economic viability and technological maturity are disjoint.
Reciprocating steam engines, as a technology, are as mature as it
gets, yet they stopped being used, as fast as they could be replaced
by diesels, gasoline engines, and/or steam turbines.  Aircraft diesels
are at least as mature as turboprops (and even more efficient), but
the savings in fuel are not worth the extra weight and mechanical
complexity, so they are unviable.







More importantly, when a set of technologies becomes mature, the
performance gains tend to level off. Petrol engined cars haven't
improved that much in the last five years, but watch what happens to
electric cars in the next five years.

Electric cars predate petrol engined cars.  Except for range, the
early ones tended to outperform the early petrol engined cars (max
speeds exceeding 100 km/h).  The only immature technology is an
inexpensive, light weight, energy-dense storage system.  Platinum
catalyst fuel cells were mature when they went to the Moon, but are
rather pricey for an econobox people mover.  Thanks to the usefulness
of battery-powered electric forklifts (where a four thousand pound
battery is a desireable feature, not a bug), electric vehicles are
very mature.

Electric cars are not mature at all. GM is spending 100s of millions
trying to figure the best way of configuring one.

GM is spending the money to configure an affordable people mover that
will die in the marketplace, when compared to internal combustion
powered conventional people movers.  The only immature component is
the storage.

Yes - apart from the batteries, most of the needed technologies are
reasonably mature but no one* has yet integrated them into an
effective electric car - but expect several to arrive in 2010.

You know nothing about electric forklifts.  While they are unconcerned
about weight, they do care about minimising battery cycles, so they
have efficient drives and regenerative braking as a matter of course.
They even have whiplash inducing acceleration when fully loaded (half
the trouble faced by novice drivers).  You can even thrash them for
eight hours on a single battery charge.



*Except Tesla, but at huge cost, because of the immaturity of the
technologies.

Only the battery, everything else is mature.







Wind energy is in the early stages of development so the economies of
scale haven't yet been exploited and the learning curve is still
steep.

No.  Wind produced electricity is in the early stages of
exploitation.  The early stages of developement happened seven, or
eight decades ago.  The early stages of non-electrical wind power go
back a few millenia.

The early stages of development happened 70-80 years ago and are still
going on.

And not all the technologies are mature. The aerofoils are pretty new
stuff. Carbon fibre is being used extensively in airframes for the
first time and turbine blades are longer, and more stressed, then
aircraft wings.

Airfoils are pretty new?  Explain that to Bernoulli, Lillienthal, and
the Wright brothers.  Not to mention thousands of years of kite
flyers.  Turbine blades are stressed differently than wings, but the
design of both benefit from the maturity of aerodynamics and
structural engineering.

THE Airfoils are pretty new. By that I mean 80m long carbon fibre
airfoils.

You seem to want wind turbines to be immature, so that there still
exist great leaps forward in performance, but wishing does not make it
so.

Of course - don't you?

I see no point chasing dreams when we have solutions, like nuclear
power, that are both mature and economically viable-- right now.  If
they only gains for wind power are reduced costs from economies of
scale (more of bigger units), the potential for wind improvements are
pretty much played out.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

On Jul 11, 11:00 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk
wrote:





On 11 Jul, 17:48, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 10, 4:14 pm, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

On 8 Jul, 08:06, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 7, 2:44 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Wind Power is still not a mature technology - the largest wind farms
in operation are only several hundred MW of capacity. That puts them
with early PWR designs in terms of maturity.

How do you define mature?

It is not merely a matter of size.  A mature technology is where all
of the black art has been codified to the point that you can stick
performance numbers and constraints into a formula and crank out a
design.  Wind power has more constraints, so the result is not
particularily desirable, but that does not make it less mature.

More relevant is the production technology. I presume you can model a
wind turbine in a CAD package, but what's equally important is how
cheaply you can build it, erect it and maintain it. That's partly a
matter of numbers - we won't see benefits till wind farms are 200 x
5MW.

Every component of wind power, taken in isolation, is mature.  Towers
are mature.  Airfoils are mature.  Generators are mature.  Even power
electronics are mature.  I fail to see how you can consider wind power
to be less than a mature technology.  They have been building wind
turbines for power production for seventy years, and then some.  How
can it not be mature?

Good question. Significant research has been going into wind turbines
since about 1990 - less than 2 decades compared with six decades for
nuclear power.

People started building wind generators at about the same Chadwick
discovered the neutron.  It was still very immature, so nothing much
came of it.  More experimental units were built by the time it was
known that a sustained fission reaction was possible.  It was touted
as the next Big Thing after the first oil shock.  According to my
memory, that was in the early to mid 1970's.

The maturity of a technology is independent of both scalability, and
economic viability.

I would suggest its closely linked - more so than the age of the
technology.

Economic viability and technological maturity are disjoint.
Reciprocating steam engines, as a technology, are as mature as it
gets, yet they stopped being used, as fast as they could be replaced
by diesels, gasoline engines, and/or steam turbines.  Aircraft diesels
are at least as mature as turboprops (and even more efficient), but
the savings in fuel are not worth the extra weight and mechanical
complexity, so they are unviable.







More importantly, when a set of technologies becomes mature, the
performance gains tend to level off. Petrol engined cars haven't
improved that much in the last five years, but watch what happens to
electric cars in the next five years.

Electric cars predate petrol engined cars.  Except for range, the
early ones tended to outperform the early petrol engined cars (max
speeds exceeding 100 km/h).  The only immature technology is an
inexpensive, light weight, energy-dense storage system.  Platinum
catalyst fuel cells were mature when they went to the Moon, but are
rather pricey for an econobox people mover.  Thanks to the usefulness
of battery-powered electric forklifts (where a four thousand pound
battery is a desireable feature, not a bug), electric vehicles are
very mature.

Electric cars are not mature at all. GM is spending 100s of millions
trying to figure the best way of configuring one.

GM is spending the money to configure an affordable people mover that
will die in the marketplace, when compared to internal combustion
powered conventional people movers.  The only immature component is
the storage.



Yes - apart from the batteries, most of the needed technologies are
reasonably mature but no one* has yet integrated them into an
effective electric car - but expect several to arrive in 2010.

You know nothing about electric forklifts.  While they are unconcerned
about weight, they do care about minimising battery cycles, so they
have efficient drives and regenerative braking as a matter of course.
They even have whiplash inducing acceleration when fully loaded (half
the trouble faced by novice drivers).  You can even thrash them for
eight hours on a single battery charge.



*Except Tesla, but at huge cost, because of the immaturity of the
technologies.

Only the battery, everything else is mature.







Wind energy is in the early stages of development so the economies of
scale haven't yet been exploited and the learning curve is still
steep.

No.  Wind produced electricity is in the early stages of
exploitation.  The early stages of developement happened seven, or
eight decades ago.  The early stages of non-electrical wind power go
back a few millenia.

The early stages of development happened 70-80 years ago and are still
going on.

And not all the technologies are mature. The aerofoils are pretty new
stuff. Carbon fibre is being used extensively in airframes for the
first time and turbine blades are longer, and more stressed, then
aircraft wings.

Airfoils are pretty new?  Explain that to Bernoulli, Lillienthal, and
the Wright brothers.  Not to mention thousands of years of kite
flyers.  Turbine blades are stressed differently than wings, but the
design of both benefit from the maturity of aerodynamics and
structural engineering.

THE Airfoils are pretty new. By that I mean 80m long carbon fibre
airfoils.

You seem to want wind turbines to be immature, so that there still
exist great leaps forward in performance, but wishing does not make it
so.

Of course - don't you?

I see no point chasing dreams when we have solutions, like nuclear
power, that are both mature and economically viable-- right now.

they only gains for wind power are reduced costs from economies of
scale (more of bigger units), the potential for wind improvements are
pretty much played out.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

On Jul 12, 10:52 pm, Bill Ghrist <notmyn... at (no spam) notmyisp.com> wrote:

Regarding the arguments about whether wind power is mature...

If you go back and read the article originally referenced by this topic
you will find that the premise has little if anything to do with the
maturity of wind power technology. Rather it has to do with the amount
and type of back up generation that must be provided if wind power is to
be a major portion of total generation. The article specifically
addresses the situation in the UK, and shows that it is not unusual to
have periods of calm winds over all of the UK and continental Europe,
sometimes for days at a time, meaning that you need an amount of backup
generating capacity equal to the total wind capacity.

Well, that's a probem with any kind of electric power.
Which is why nano-batteries are being developed, regardless of how
power
is generated.

On 17 Jul, 08:28, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 16, 11:03 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk
wrote:

On 16 Jul, 08:11, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 15, 2:13 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

On 13 Jul, 03:52, Bill Ghrist <notmyn... at (no spam) notmyisp.com> wrote:

Regarding the arguments about whether wind power is mature...

If you go back and read the article originally referenced by this topic
you will find that the premise has little if anything to do with the
maturity of wind power technology. Rather it has to do with the amount
and type of back up generation that must be provided if wind power is to
be a major portion of total generation. The article specifically
addresses the situation in the UK, and shows that it is not unusual to
have periods of calm winds over all of the UK and continental Europe,
sometimes for days at a time, meaning that you need an amount of backup
generating capacity equal to the total wind capacity.

Back on topic! Thanks.

And my response was it's an excellent article but there are several
points that the author misses. He concedes he doesn't analyse the
impact electric cars, which with a 30% market share might provide
10KWhrs x 10 million = 100 GWhrs flexible storage capacity.

Let me get this straight: During some parts of the winter when I plug
in my hypothetical electric car, not only will I not get any charge,
but the electric company will siphon some charge out of it. Even
better, it can last every night for a week.

If you agree yes. Probably the easiest way is when you park your car,
you set a time for when you want it fully charged. Cheap, complex
software does the rest.

So the vehicle battery is used not for storage, but the charger
interacts with the grid to manage the load curve, eliminating some of
the need for peaking units that wind supplements fuel for. This makes
the economic model for wind worse, not better. Baseload unit produce
very inexpensive electricity that wind generators cannot compete
against.

Onshore wind power is already cost competitive with most forms of
generation, measured by c/KWhr.

The issue raised is that an additional cost of standby capacity is
needed.

Making demand more flexible is a way of overcoming some of this
requirement.

There are a number of ways of making demand more flexible, of which
electric powered vehicles will be the largest scale. (It's like
running your dishwasher at night, but on a much bigger scale, and in a
smarter way).

This makes the economics of wind better.

On Jul 17, 1:54 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:





On 17 Jul, 08:28, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 16, 11:03 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk
wrote:

On 16 Jul, 08:11, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 15, 2:13 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

On 13 Jul, 03:52, Bill Ghrist <notmyn... at (no spam) notmyisp.com> wrote:

Regarding the arguments about whether wind power is mature...

If you go back and read the article originally referenced by this topic
you will find that the premise has little if anything to do with the
maturity of wind power technology.  Rather it has to do with the amount
and type of back up generation that must be provided if wind power is to
  be a major portion of total generation.  The article specifically
addresses the situation in the UK, and shows that it is not unusual to
have periods of calm winds over all of the UK and continental Europe,
sometimes for days at a time, meaning that you need an amount of backup
generating capacity equal to the total wind capacity.

Back on topic! Thanks.

And my response was it's an excellent article but there are several
points that the author misses. He concedes he doesn't analyse the
impact electric cars, which with a 30% market share might provide
10KWhrs x 10 million = 100 GWhrs flexible storage capacity.

Let me get this straight:  During some parts of the winter when I plug
in my hypothetical electric car, not only will I not get any charge,
but the electric company will siphon some charge out of it.  Even
better, it can last every night for a week.

If you agree yes. Probably the easiest way is when you park your car,
you set a time for when you want it fully charged. Cheap, complex
software does the rest.

So the vehicle battery is used not for storage, but the charger
interacts with the grid to manage the load curve, eliminating some of
the need for peaking units that wind supplements fuel for.  This makes
the economic model for wind worse, not better.  Baseload unit produce
very inexpensive electricity that wind generators cannot compete
against.

Onshore wind power is already cost competitive with most forms of
generation, measured by c/KWhr.

The issue raised is that an additional cost of standby capacity is
needed.

Making demand more flexible is a way of overcoming some of this
requirement.

There are a number of ways of making demand more flexible, of which
electric powered vehicles will be the largest scale. (It's like
running your dishwasher at night, but on a much bigger scale, and in a
smarter way).

This makes the economics of wind better.

If I accept that wind power is competive with most forms of
generation, you must acknowledge that it is not competitive with all
forms of generation.  Wind is cost competitive with peaking units.
However load management reduces the need for peaking units, and enough
of it will eliminate peaking units altogether.  In a fully managed
load environment, wind is only competing with baseload units.  In that
environment, wind power makes no economic sense.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

On 17 Jul, 18:13, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:



On Jul 17, 1:54 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

On 17 Jul, 08:28, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 16, 11:03 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk
wrote:

On 16 Jul, 08:11, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 15, 2:13 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

On 13 Jul, 03:52, Bill Ghrist <notmyn... at (no spam) notmyisp.com> wrote:

Regarding the arguments about whether wind power is mature...

If you go back and read the article originally referenced by this topic
you will find that the premise has little if anything to do with the
maturity of wind power technology. Rather it has to do with the amount
and type of back up generation that must be provided if wind power is to
be a major portion of total generation. The article specifically
addresses the situation in the UK, and shows that it is not unusual to
have periods of calm winds over all of the UK and continental Europe,
sometimes for days at a time, meaning that you need an amount of backup
generating capacity equal to the total wind capacity.

Back on topic! Thanks.

And my response was it's an excellent article but there are several
points that the author misses. He concedes he doesn't analyse the
impact electric cars, which with a 30% market share might provide
10KWhrs x 10 million = 100 GWhrs flexible storage capacity.

Let me get this straight: During some parts of the winter when I plug
in my hypothetical electric car, not only will I not get any charge,
but the electric company will siphon some charge out of it. Even
better, it can last every night for a week.

If you agree yes. Probably the easiest way is when you park your car,
you set a time for when you want it fully charged. Cheap, complex
software does the rest.

So the vehicle battery is used not for storage, but the charger
interacts with the grid to manage the load curve, eliminating some of
the need for peaking units that wind supplements fuel for. This makes
the economic model for wind worse, not better. Baseload unit produce
very inexpensive electricity that wind generators cannot compete
against.

Onshore wind power is already cost competitive with most forms of
generation, measured by c/KWhr.

The issue raised is that an additional cost of standby capacity is
needed.

Making demand more flexible is a way of overcoming some of this
requirement.

There are a number of ways of making demand more flexible, of which
electric powered vehicles will be the largest scale. (It's like
running your dishwasher at night, but on a much bigger scale, and in a
smarter way).

This makes the economics of wind better.

If I accept that wind power is competive with most forms of
generation, you must acknowledge that it is not competitive with all
forms of generation. Wind is cost competitive with peaking units.
However load management reduces the need for peaking units, and enough
of it will eliminate peaking units altogether. In a fully managed
load environment, wind is only competing with baseload units. In that
environment, wind power makes no economic sense.

OK, but lets look at the alternatives.

- Coal is the cheapest and its abundant. However, if you price in the
carbon output, or require sequestration, it's now on a par with on
shore wind.
- Nuclear - if you look at the cost models, the overriding cost driver
is cost of capital. The French Government had a low cost of capital is
therefore able to supply very cheap electricity. The next biggest
variable is uncertainty over construction costs. I would expect
nuclear to be cheaper than the current cost of wind power. However,
Britain is not going to build more that a dozen nukes, which could
provide a maximum of 40% of the electricity supply.

- Gas: Cheap to build, but very expensive to operate. Given current
gas prices, on shore wind is cheaper. In future, gas should be used
for peaking units (or for home power generation - where its efficiency
can approach 100%).

- Oil: Similar analysis to gas, but more expensive.
- Wind: On shore can supply competitively, but is space constrained.
Offshore not yet competitive, but the cost curve (ref discussion above
about immaturity) is looking promising.
- Solar: Hugely expensive, but has the most promising cost curve, but
mainly for countries with a lot of sun and where maximum demand
correlates with maximum sun,

So I could see a rosy scenario where the UK electricty mix is 1/3
nuclear, 1/3 wind, 1/3 gas, with most of the gas being micro CHP. And
a high capacity line to Norway, where surplus wind is used to pump
water up mountains.

On Jul 18, 2:01 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:



On 17 Jul, 18:13, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 17, 1:54 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

On 17 Jul, 08:28, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 16, 11:03 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk
wrote:

On 16 Jul, 08:11, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 15, 2:13 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

On 13 Jul, 03:52, Bill Ghrist <notmyn... at (no spam) notmyisp.com> wrote:

Regarding the arguments about whether wind power is mature...

If you go back and read the article originally referenced by this topic
you will find that the premise has little if anything to do with the
maturity of wind power technology. Rather it has to do with the amount
and type of back up generation that must be provided if wind power is to
be a major portion of total generation. The article specifically
addresses the situation in the UK, and shows that it is not unusual to
have periods of calm winds over all of the UK and continental Europe,
sometimes for days at a time, meaning that you need an amount of backup
generating capacity equal to the total wind capacity.

Back on topic! Thanks.

And my response was it's an excellent article but there are several
points that the author misses. He concedes he doesn't analyse the
impact electric cars, which with a 30% market share might provide
10KWhrs x 10 million = 100 GWhrs flexible storage capacity.

Let me get this straight: During some parts of the winter when I plug
in my hypothetical electric car, not only will I not get any charge,
but the electric company will siphon some charge out of it. Even
better, it can last every night for a week.

If you agree yes. Probably the easiest way is when you park your car,
you set a time for when you want it fully charged. Cheap, complex
software does the rest.

So the vehicle battery is used not for storage, but the charger
interacts with the grid to manage the load curve, eliminating some of
the need for peaking units that wind supplements fuel for. This makes
the economic model for wind worse, not better. Baseload unit produce
very inexpensive electricity that wind generators cannot compete
against.

Onshore wind power is already cost competitive with most forms of
generation, measured by c/KWhr.

The issue raised is that an additional cost of standby capacity is
needed.

Making demand more flexible is a way of overcoming some of this
requirement.

There are a number of ways of making demand more flexible, of which
electric powered vehicles will be the largest scale. (It's like
running your dishwasher at night, but on a much bigger scale, and in a
smarter way).

This makes the economics of wind better.

If I accept that wind power is competive with most forms of
generation, you must acknowledge that it is not competitive with all
forms of generation. Wind is cost competitive with peaking units.
However load management reduces the need for peaking units, and enough
of it will eliminate peaking units altogether. In a fully managed
load environment, wind is only competing with baseload units. In that
environment, wind power makes no economic sense.

OK, but lets look at the alternatives.

- Coal is the cheapest and its abundant. However, if you price in the
carbon output, or require sequestration, it's now on a par with on
shore wind.
- Nuclear - if you look at the cost models, the overriding cost driver
is cost of capital. The French Government had a low cost of capital is
therefore able to supply very cheap electricity. The next biggest
variable is uncertainty over construction costs. I would expect
nuclear to be cheaper than the current cost of wind power. However,
Britain is not going to build more that a dozen nukes, which could
provide a maximum of 40% of the electricity supply.

Did they pass laws banning the construction of more than dozen?

For better or for worse, in effect and by default, yes. (Except on the

- Gas: Cheap to build, but very expensive to operate. Given current
gas prices, on shore wind is cheaper. In future, gas should be used
for peaking units (or for home power generation - where its efficiency
can approach 100%).

When you talk about CHP and electricity production, at the same time,
you must sperate the heating efficiency from the conversion
efficiency. You must also seperate the electrical output from the
heat output. As a heat source, they are expensive, but thermally
competitive, however, their heating efficiency goes down when they are
also producing electricity (but it does produce electricity). As a
generator, they are comparable in output to a portable gasoline
powered generator, except that they are less efficient and more costly
(way, way too much waste heat). Their only excuse for existing is
producing heat and power at the same time. Getting electricity out of
them when they are not producing heat is really expensive.

I was looking for a cost competitive successor to the whispergen. That

- Oil: Similar analysis to gas, but more expensive.
- Wind: On shore can supply competitively, but is space constrained.
Offshore not yet competitive, but the cost curve (ref discussion above
about immaturity) is looking promising.
- Solar: Hugely expensive, but has the most promising cost curve, but
mainly for countries with a lot of sun and where maximum demand
correlates with maximum sun,

So I could see a rosy scenario where the UK electricty mix is 1/3
nuclear, 1/3 wind, 1/3 gas, with most of the gas being micro CHP. And
a high capacity line to Norway, where surplus wind is used to pump
water up mountains.

No, the ratios, as you describe them, are 1/2 nuclear, 1/2 wind, and
1/2 gas turbines (50% overcapacity);

really expensive peaking power and importing up to a third of
electricity demanded at any given time. The norwegians are only going
to buy surplus wind power killowatt*hours if they are sold at less
than the cost of hydro-electric kilowatt*hours, but they will sell the
power back at peaking rates (that's the free market, for you).

insult to injury, if the high capacity line does not run directly to
Norway,under the North Sea, every utility along the way will charge
for wheeling the power (as it reduces their transmission capacity, but
does not supply them with power).

There would need to be a European, or North Sea HVDC grid. Nice thing

I can see a rosier picture with 100% nuclear producing hydrogen for
fuel cells during the off-peak periods, and the fuel cells supply any
needed peaking power (not as cheap pumped storage, but way cheaper
than oil/gas peaking). Everybody pays less for electricity and there
is hydrogen for their fuel cell cars.

On 19 Jul, 19:48, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

On Jul 18, 12:36 pm, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe... at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk
wrote:

On 18 Jul, 17:01, "rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com" <rlbell.ns... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:

- Nuclear - if you look at the cost models, the overriding cost driver
is cost of capital. The French Government had a low cost of capital is
therefore able to supply very cheap electricity. The next biggest
variable is uncertainty over construction costs. I would expect
nuclear to be cheaper than the current cost of wind power. However,
Britain is not going to build more that a dozen nukes, which could
provide a maximum of 40% of the electricity supply.

Did they pass laws banning the construction of more than dozen?

For better or for worse, in effect and by default, yes. (Except on the
other side of the channel).

So, in truth, the UK has not irreversibly banned further construction.

- Gas: Cheap to build, but very expensive to operate. Given current
gas prices, on shore wind is cheaper. In future, gas should be used
for peaking units (or for home power generation - where its efficiency
can approach 100%).

When you talk about CHP and electricity production, at the same time,
you must sperate the heating efficiency from the conversion
efficiency. You must also seperate the electrical output from the
heat output. As a heat source, they are expensive, but thermally
competitive, however, their heating efficiency goes down when they are
also producing electricity (but it does produce electricity). As a
generator, they are comparable in output to a portable gasoline
powered generator, except that they are less efficient and more costly
(way, way too much waste heat). Their only excuse for existing is
producing heat and power at the same time. Getting electricity out of
them when they are not producing heat is really expensive.

I was looking for a cost competitive successor to the whispergen. That
could be a fuel cell or a small gas turbine, producing about 25%
electricity, 70% usable heat, and perhaps 5% waste (which is more than
a condensing boiler).

Going by the spec/info (and interpreting them as optimistically as
possible), the whispergen has an electrical conversion efficiency of
(1kw electric and 7.5 kw heat) 12%-- with a Sterling cycle! Sterlings
are actually a really good choice, as a well designed installation,
with appropriate duct work, can supply heat and electricity, draw
power and pull heat in from outside, or draw power and pump heat out
of the house. Another interpretation of the specs puts the efficiency
up to ~18% (0W electricity and 7.5kW heat to 1kW electricity and
12.3kW of heat). While not as good as a Carnot engine, the Sterling
is as good an engine as can be built (unless you care about size--
they are very large for their output).

The words 'small', 'gas turbine' and '25% efficiency' do not go
together. Much of the losses in a gas turbine arise from air slipping
past the blade tips. Large gas turbines get around this by having a
tiny clearance, relative to their blade length, but the smallest
possible clearance gap is not that different for a two foot blade, as
a two inch blade (once both units are at speed and up to normal
operating temperature). Another loss is heat passing through the wall
of the combustor, and out of the engine, before the working fluid gets
to the turbine, which also unfairly penalises small units.

I would like to be wrong, but does anybody make a gas turbine CHP unit
under 50kW?

Not sure. I've seen quite a few whispergen type units at about 10KWe -
good for blocks of flats and small factories.

You mentioned earlier you expected a hydrogen economy. A better goal
might be domestic fuel cells. These can convert gas to electricity at
about 40%. Capturing the vast majority of heat should be trivial.

Two and a half times the cost of a nuclear generated kWhr is still
less than the cost of a peaking unit kWhr.

Gas would have to go up a lot more for that.

And for storing energy a VRB unit will be much more cost effective
than hydrogen.

There are schemes like this though:http://www.vrbpower.com/technology/ess-specifications.html

It would be interesting see what the cost is per GWhr of storage. If
you were designing a HVDC grid (as a CEGB / French Government might,
rather than having economics dictate it), it might make sense to have
a few GWHr storage plants at the ends of the HVDC net.

Storage of real energy is less important for HVDC systems than a solid
source of reactive power. Once you get past driving large motors, you
really do not want to use inverters-- they are too inefficient, so the
receiving end of the HVDC link has to have enough reactive power to
excite the rectifier bridge. HVDC links cannot transfer reactive
power and both ends of the link are heavy reactive loads. Also, there
is no coupling between the ends of the HVDC link, so weakness at one
end cannot be assisted by stiffness at the other and the large
inductance of the HVDC line will prevent fast power responses.

So if I was designing an HVDC grid, there would be large synchronous
reactances to provide reactive power, and their rotational inertia
would stiffen the grid long enough to adjust power distribution
(alternatively, a diesel engine helps keep the system frequency from
falling).

As I understand HVDC beats AC for lengths of more than a few hundred
kilometres, or under water.

The transfer of power is controlled by computer, rather than
reactively following loads.

Any distribution system is limited in the power it can transport, so a
storage system at either end can be useful.