Bungendore Wind Farm output??

Hi 62woollybugger,

Going by the results of some other wind farms I would be surprised if they manage to generate much more then half that figure :-))

I suspect that it's only tax write offs and 'carbon credits' that make some of these wind farms viable.


KK

Have you got a link craig ?

Cheers

Steve

Craig

Sounds like BS to me. First of all what kind of measurement is "120kW a day". It's like saying your car can produce 120kW per day. It doesn't make sense really.

At the moment 1 kWh can be bought for 18c (at retail prices). So for $20 000 you can buy 111 111 kWh of electricty. If your 5kW unit produced 5kW of electricity for 8 hours a day it would take 7 and a half years to genrate $20 000 worth of electricity.

Maybe my figures are wrong, but it seems to me like you don't have a full understanding of what you describe.

The sentence should read "the same amount of generated electricity"

Geoff. Huh??? Would you run that past me again???

Isn't Bungendore directly in the path of hot air going due East from Canberra??

So what happens to the 100MW of electricity generated by the coal?

"So what happens to the 100MW of electricity generated by the coal?"

Nothing "happens" to it, it "absorbs" for want of a better term the "potholes and irregularities" of the other generation system.

Wind never blows at a constant velocity and stable electricty requires a constant energy source. The most constant we have at the moment is steam. The least constant are wind, wave and solar.

So as the output "quality" of the wind farm is going above and below the desired values for voltage and frequency something has to smooth the supply out. In Australia's case coal fired stations are used. (In England, US or France it's most likely a nuclear station performing the same task)

The power delivered to our homes is in the form of Alternating Current (AC), in our vehicles it's Direct Current (DC)

In a DC system life is simple, Volts x Amps = Watts (Power) and the two worlds are in alignment.

In an AC system it's not that simple. Volts and Amps are rarely in alignment, one is always lagging the other. If Volts get to far behind Amps things get very, very unstable (Outside known Electrical Physics actually) and something has to be done quickly.

This is the realm wind generators operate in, they are inherently unstable and cause the Amps to lead the Volts. Not good! So to correct it a large rotating mass such as a coal fired or nuclear powered generator is used to bring everything back into alignment.

A really over simplistic analogy is two equal 4wd's of your choice joined by a rope. They are pulling in opposite directions, lots of fuel being burnt, lots of noise being made and a net forward result of nothing for either of them.

If you took away one of the 4wd's and the rope you'd go forward.
Hence my statement, "So if nobody built ~100MW of wind farm we could burn ~100MW less of coal for the same amount of generated electricity."

I did a lot of thinking before the original post as to how I was going to explain the concept without resorting to university level electrical engineering theory. For someone working in the industry I get sick of all the rubbish sprouting from mostly pollies and greenies on the subject of alternative energy.

At the moment there are about three stable technologies and one emerging technology for base load power in this country. None of which are wind, wave or solar. NOTE: I said at the moment, I have been doing some work with a major Australian University on the subject of solar recently and they have some really interesting plans coming to a pilot plant soon.

The stable technologies are coal, gas and nuclear. The emerging is hot fractured rock geothermal.

Solar in this country could be a gold mine if it's applied to bio-mass plants on a large scale. Converting say algae to diesel requires massive amounts of energy. Large parabolic solar collectors can supply this on a massive scale for almost no running costs.

Anyway, enough of my rant for the day.

My suggestion to anyone interested in what I have to say is do lots of research and for heavens sake don't watch commercial television to find the answer!

Geoff

Geoff,

You are 110% correct with your assessment of the situation, it is exactly the same here in the USA,

My brother in law is a planner for Edison and it makes him so mad that people just don't understand that homes, industry, hospitals etc etc HAVE to have a constant reliable source of electricity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year not just when the sun shines or wind blows.

He now has to figure in a certain % of electricity from renewable sources but he also has to cover that % from a reliable source.

Regards

Bruce

Geoff,

Interesting point you make. Which is why all of these renewable green forms of energy will amount to very little until some serious research is done into how to get around the problem of dense energy storage. Until we are able to store the energy from renewable (but unreliable) energy sources, then we are never going to make inroads into the base power load which, as you point out, is still supplied by the 'dirty' generators.

Matt.

Matt,
You've got it in one when you say that.

There is some really great laboratory work going on at the moment on the subject of storing solar energy for later use.

One that springs to mind is using a parabolic solar dish to heat water for steam during the day whilst simultaneously heating Ammonia to split it into its component gasses of Nitrogen and Hydrogen.

At night the Nitrogen and Hydrogen are recombined into Ammonia (a vast over simplification of the process but it'll do for this discusssion) as a part of the recreation of Ammonia the heat stored during the day is given off and used to generate power. (There are losses as with any physical system in this world)

There a couple of non insurmountable flaws with this idea,
The first is the massive amounts of storage required for the Ammonia, Hydrogen and Nitrogen. Even in a laboratory environment and run a time of a few hours the storage is huge! I'd have to go back over my notes but is's massive!

The other problem is purely greenhouse, the most economical way to make commercial quantities of Ammonia requires the combustion of natural gas in a boiler and the collection of the exhaust gasses as a raw material for the Ammonia process. (The heat generated in the boiler is also used in the process) One of the waste products of Ammonia production is CO2. Companies such as BOC, Air Liquide, Linde and Core Gas collect the CO2 from Ammonia plants and on sell it as the gas we find in our soft drinks and the gas used to push beer out of kegs.

As I said there's a lot of great research going on in this area but at the moment it's just research, not the commercially viable alternatives main stream media is reporting it as being.

I could spend a week outlining some of the research plans for solar energy storage not using batteries.

One of the hurdles Australian Universities are currently facing is funding. I was talking to one of the supervising professors a month or two back about government funding for alternative energy research and he had this to say:

"We've only recently (In a research time frame) had a change of federal government. The previous government on the surface appeared ambivalent to alternative energy research but always gave funding to projects grounded on sound science. This government talks incessantly about alternate energy but is yet to fund a single research project"

Anyway, one of my pet gripes is the amount of absolute BS in parliament house and the media on energy and renewable energy in particular!

Geoff

Geoff,

Thanks for that informative answer. While it is refreshing to have an educated answer on this form.

Gday Geof
Thanks for the good read and information.
Murray

Thi is some of the information i've been able to get from this guy that i know that is designing this new Solar Thermal unit.



Through the utilisation of the Phase Change Material (PCM), Energy Storage Units, this product, addresses the issue common to all previous solar power systems, the diurnal supply of solar energy from the Sun. The PCM Energy Storage Units enable 24hr generation and are designed to handle up to 3 days without sunshine.

If inclement weather persists the dual fuel micro-turbine can be specified with a fluid or gaseous back-up system.

As all of our systems are capable of paying for themselves and providing an income, the break- even point (BEP), that is never reached with PV systems is reached within 2-3 years.


Solar Concentrator

CSE CSP parabolic concentrators are used to magnify the solar energy and concentrate it on a small receiver area. The reflective loss is about 8% and due to the rigid nature of the stainless steel mirror, the solar radiation is concentrated from 30metres down to 10cm at the thermal collector of the storage capsule.

The stainless steel reflector has a Titanium coating to prevent the build-up of dust or corrosion and is expected to last for 50 years with monthly maintenance.
The design uses a short, squat tower with extended arms to support the thermal energy storage(TES), and MicroTurbine. The concentrator, TES and engine will weigh about 30 tonnes and will present a minimal surface area to high winds when in the park position (12 noon).
The TES is designed to provide enough energy for 3 days of autonomous generation without solar replenishment after which the unit operates on liquid or gaseous fuel. Using CNG the exhaust is cleaner than the ambient air with <7ppm NOx at 18% O2.


Fig 1 – CSE CSP Unit

The 65Kw installation will include a 30metre parabolic concentrator. This reflector follows the sun throughout the day with predictive and peak power tracking software.


Phase Change Material (PCM) Energy Storage Unit

The solar energy is concentrated into a 10cm thermal receptor in the base of the Thermal Energy Storage (TES), at up to 2100oC. The Phase Change Material (PCM) is secured in silica carbide envelopes and operates in the latent heat area of the temperature range, 1410oC.

Silica Metalloid stores thermal energy to supply micro-turbines which are connected directly to the storage unit and fed thermal energy via a nitrogen medium.

Silica Metalloid is produced from beach sand in Western Australia. It has a large latent heat storage capacity in the phase change area, 20 times the storage capacity of a lead acid battery. The silica melts at 1410oCelsius and is then heated to 2100oCelsius throughout the day.

After sundown or on cloudy days, this latent energy is used to maintain the operation of the micro-turbine. The system is therefore a base load design with the capacity to produce its rated output 24 hours per day for up to 3 days without sunshine.

During long periods of inclement weather the micro-turbine uses gaseous or liquid fuel as back-up to guarantee baseload power.

Hi Craig2,
This sounds an aweful lot like a research project that was going on in Melbourne a couple of years back.

The system I looked at was heating a salt solution (not sodium chloride) to some insane temperatures as a thermal battery and releasing it at a later time.

So what their saying is the energy storage unit undergoes a state change at about 1410degC, "operates in the latent heat area of the temperature range, 1410oC" from solid to liquid or liquid to vapour? Most likely into a liquid to give a greater heat density?
It then continues heating up to what appears to be 2100degC. "is then heated to 2100oCelsius throughout the day."

It even burns a liquid or gas fuel as backup! "If inclement weather persists the dual fuel micro-turbine can be specified with a fluid or gaseous back-up system."
My choice would be mains electricity rather than natural gas or a fuel oil to electricity in the home!

It is a rather bulky thing, "The concentrator, TES and engine will weigh about 30 tonnes and will present a minimal surface area to high winds when in the park position (12 noon)."

And 30 metre's in diameter!
"solar radiation is concentrated from 30metres down to 10cm at the thermal collector of the storage capsule."

Which really is about the size you'd need for any meaningful kind of output.

I'm not sure there are too many people who'd have room for one in their backyard!

Interesting even if it's written in marketing speak!

Look forward to seeing where it ends up.

Geoff

Hi Allan,
Apologies for confusing you, that was as I'm sure we both know by your great question far from my intent.

Oddly enough, No, the coal fired station doesn't "back off" by the same amount. It actually ramps up by almost exactly the same amount as the wind turbine to stabilise the inherently unstable nature of the power produced by the wind turbine!

Which is the core of the problem myself and a lot of people who understand power generation and reticulation physics have with the current infatuation with wind turbines.

See my very, very simplistic analogy of the two 4wd's joined by a rope. The actual answer is far more complex and really hard to explain with out graphical vector diagrams. But basically if you didn't run one you wouldn't need the balance of the other!

Please do some research of your own and don't take my explanations as gospel. I always ecourage my daughters to think for themselves especially on matters as complex and important as this one.

Geoff

Exactly,

Mike,

I thought they were using the polizinic ash now in the manufacture of cement?
Cheers

Unfortunately in this case, the supply greatly exceeds the demand - many truckloads a day are being added to the huge dump.

Wamuranman,
As Mike says, supply way exceeds demand.

For example, Northern Power Station near Port Augusta in SA burns 80,000 tonnes of brown coal per day!

That is just one station in one state in Australia, imagine how much of the stuff is being spat out of boilers across the world every hour of every day of every year!

Geoff

Gday,
Just had a look at the ash on Google!..........is it poisonous or any thing? Can it be safely put back into the ground or reused?

Cheers

Todays total-extraction mining means that the roof collapses directly behind the longwall roof suppports, so there are no caverns to fill up.

Anyway, it would cost a lot more to transport it underground.

Hi John,
Thanks for your patience in reading my ramblings!

Where do I start? All very credible questions!

"phasing and frequency would always be locked to the biggest supplier" Very true, to an extent!
Then add in a phenomenom called Power Factor which for want of a better description is the relationship between Volts and Amps in an AC system and which one of the two is leading the other. This is the area I'm talking about rather than pure frequency and phases. It's actually the core of what I'm saying in regard to having base load power match in this case wind power at pretty much 1:1.

"if any little generator tried to push ahead they would find themselves carrying an impossible share of the load" Again very true and a very accurate summary, best answer is see my response regarding Power Factor above.

I'm actually struggling here to give real world responses without talking over peoples heads and over simplifying things too!

"optimising the load to match the generating capacity rather than vice versa." True too, I've deliberately been avoiding this one as it's a whole can of worms on its own! There is a body corporate in Australia that handles this, it's called NEMMCO (or it used to be, it has a flash new acronym now days that escapes me at the moment!)

One of the biggest things impacting planning is the break up and sell off (in Victoria at least) of the generators from a state entity to various either privately owned companies (in Vic) or standalone for profit but government owned entities in the rest of the country.

Basically what happens now is the moment there's a shortfall on the grid and the spot price rises everyone attempts to get a cut to improve their bottom line. (Again an over simplification of a complex answer but I think you'll get the drift)

"Why aren't these electricity hungry desal plants coming on line when there is surplus capacity, be it from wind, coal, whatever??"

I think you answered the above question quite eloquently when you said,

"All way outside the attention span of politicians and the media."

Pretty much what happens is there's been so much public money spent it really has to "be seen to be producing" something.

The whole energy market is far too large to be left in the hands of simple minded politicians.

Geoff

Thank you Geoff. Very interesting and elucidates something that is of mounting importance as our electricity demand rises at an increasing rate to cover "clean" transport, extra summer cooling,...., and even potable water production. I've never wrapped my head properly around power factor as it applies in big systems and always assumed that phasing issues needed to be dealt with at the consumer end rather than at the supply. I have some interesting reading to catch up on!

Pity everything of importance needs to be reduced to a 5 second media grab or a pithy sentence to be uttered by an uncomprehending politician!

Cheers

John

John,
Power Factor really needs to be dealt with at each level of the process!

It's absolutely essential to the generator as he needs to know he's not operating in the realm of KiloVolt Amps Reactive (KVAR) ie, the Amps are way ahead of the Volts taking the grid into the realms of unknown Electrical Physics and instabilty. The instability is certainly known to be there in this scenario but nobody truly knows how bad it could get and nobody is prepared to find out.

The retailer (Ergon, Country Energy, Energy Australia etc) is keen to improve Power Factor as they are charged for all their power includng non productive KVAR's.

The consumer hasn't got a clue about the whole physics of it they just know their bill has gone up! Even though the KVAR's aren't metered at the retail level they still pay for them as the retailer had to pay for them.

One of the greatest ill conceived plans at the moment are those low voltage compact fluoro's! They have a Power Factor of 0.45 which is atrocious!

Here in Newcastle Energy Australia where giving them to consumers by the carton a few years back until they realised their supplier, the generators had upped the wholesale cost of the energy monumentally under penalty clauses for buggering the Power Factor.

The cause? The literally hundreds of thousands of compact fluoro's they'd given away. The rotten things are still on the shelf at 0.45 Power Factor and could be fixed for about 10 cents each.

If anyone doesn't believe me next time you are at Woolies grab one off the shelf and read the box fine print, it's there for all to see if you understand what it means.

The world is screwed! People seam to think a "good idea" can overrule the only true laws in this universe, the laws of physics!

Geoff