brightspark
Member
- Messages
- 41,257
- Location
- yarm stockton on tees
and who is going to pay for all this equipment rent the space and maintain it ??
- Thread starter mart
- Start date
Firstly the use of pumped storage, the majority of excess generation would happen in Summer and the size of the pumped storage needed would be truly staggering. Pumped storage is a good system for balancing load over a day with the water pumped up overnight and used during high peak demands, even providing a few days storage would be a massive undertaking let alone trying to capture summer spare capacity and release it in winter.
PV is not currently a viable technology in this country, again the majority of demand is in winter and during hours of darkness. Also keep in mind that the whole life pollution caused by PV panels in the UK is worse than for coal fired power stations. The use of renewable energy has added hundreds of pounds to peoples household costs to provide an unreliable source of energy that tends to provide peak capacity when it is needed the least. Even the biomas steam generation plants (burning straw etc) are not viable without massive subsidies and provide stuff all electricity. The use of large quantities of PV systems also causes big problems with the regulation, control and monitoring of the national grid.
Even Germany that had embraced renewable energy (and has much more available space and more hours of sunshine) has now admitted it is not viable and is building new coal powered plants as the cost of electricity is killing their industry.
The truth is that the renewable energies can provide some smaller makeup of the power grid but conventional generation (gas, coal or nuclear) are required to meet demand at a reasonable price.
mr migwire
It's more fun with metal.
- Messages
- 1,874
- Location
- fife
i heard today that they are putting up wind turbines in the great glen (scotland) the energy generated is to be used off peak for pumping back to holding ponds but it looks like they are still going to take some off the grid as the turbines aren't 24/7 reliable.
brightspark
Member
- Messages
- 41,257
- Location
- yarm stockton on tees
i once went up to a power station for a look round up scotland they pumped the water up in to a lake on the night time then just used it to generate electricity when there was peak demand on the grid system. as a coal fired plant cant just start up at a minutes notice and be on line it wasnt producing free electric as the motor and pumps cost a fair bit to run and pump it up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Pumped-storage
Coal power plants are better suited to provide base load, whilst on barring they are able to start up in a relatively short time, they are not efficient to run at part load, Gas plants are much more responsive with CCGTs able to start up in about 1 hour again assuming the plant was on barring.
daleyd
Member
- Messages
- 10,421
- Location
- Wrexham, North Wales
Dinorwig, the trips around there are quite interesting. Even my missus was mildly interested which is saying something!!
My old man worked on the construction of that many years ago, and also some stuff on trawsfynydd in the 80's.
