3 ms·
> Large scale power plants (coal, nuclear, even gas to some extent) run at a very steady output I wonder if we could do the same with legacy power plants as th
by bjz_ 12y ago
> Large scale power plants (coal, nuclear, even gas to some extent) run at a very steady output
I wonder if we could do the same with legacy power plants as they do with solar thermal - shove some of the excess heat into molten salt heat storage when renewables are reaching their maximum output, then use that as a finer throttling mechanism. That would mean you wouldn't have to run the coal plants as heavily non-stop. It could buy us some time as we figure out how best to store the energy from photovoltaics and wind (it's pretty much solved for solar thermal).
- thrownaway2424 12y agoIsn't it solved for any prime generator, by way of hydroelectric storage? It's quite efficient and hills are common.
- jimmcslim 12y agoHills might be common, but suitable geography for creating a dam out of them is probably less so. Not to mention that such geography frequently tends to cover farmland and rural communities who are less than likely to want their land flooded.. they may also tend to vote on the conservative-side of the spectrum which cares less for renewable generation such as hydro. The construction cost of dams isn't insignificant either!
- markvdb 12y agoIn Japan, and soon in Belgium too, "energy islands" are built in the sea to store wind energy. http://rt.com/news/belgium-battery-island-renewable-319/ http://rt.com/news/belgium-battery-island-renewable-319/ (P.S. I couldn't immediately find any more reputable English speaking news source for this. Oh well, on this sort of fairly neutral subject, rt.con seem to do quite well.)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- hellgas00 12y agoIt just takes a lot of water and space to make any meaningful dent in the power supply. There are hydroelectric storage facilities near Niagara falls but they produce something like 50MW for a very limited time. If you take for instance an elevation of 100m, to produce 1000MW of electricity it would take about 1000m^3 of water per second (before losses). In other words a pipe of a diameter of 6ft would need to need to move 20.8ft of water through it per second, which would be enough water to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool in about 2.5sec. That's 5760 pools for 4hrs of 1000MWh of electricity, not an insignificant amount of space.
- thrownaway2424 12y agoI think you should read up. There are multiple such facilities in the US with power over 1GW and capacity of several hours. They were built decades ago with decades-ago technology.
- hellgas00 12y agoI am aware that these facilities exist, the problem is geography. Unless you live near a ridge that provides 100m+ of head and consists of non-porous rock, it wouldn't be cost effective.