This is an option to help with the smoothing problem :
and
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/opinion/comment/energy-storage-gets-second-wind/1008373.article
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Compressed Air Energy Storage
Posted in Energy Efficiency, Energy Storage, Wind Power
Tagged air, compressed, storage, turbine, wind
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We want more turbines please!
How refreshing to hear about this group of villagers in Fintry, Scotland who demanded more wind turbines, after they saw how effective they were.
This is in contrast to the standard nimbyism that so many developments in the UK face. A local scheme very nearby to me has faced years of opposition for all the standard short sighted reasons, and I recently heard that the developers eventually sold the site and dropped the plans to develop with turbines.
The reasons for the protest were the usual:
- It’ll harm the environment! (Wind turbines are pretty low impact. Removing them in the future and returning the land to how it was before is relatively easy since the turbines don’t pollute the area)
- It’ll kill wildlife! (Not sure how many times this needs to be refuted, but the impact is minimal, given consideration to migration paths in particular)
- It’ll be noisy! (Will it really? A turbine will be actually be about as noisy as a large tree!)
- It’s an ugly blot on the landscape! (Subjective of course, I think they’re beautiful, and most people who live near them find them neutral or better. )
- We don’t need them! (Really? We don’t need to harness this free energy? I suppose not if everyone is willing to go back to a low energy lifestyle, or suffer the consequences of increasing fossil fuel usage)
- It’ll be dangerous! (Well, only if you try to climb it, headbutt it, or fly your hang glider into it! Somewhat like a tree…)
- Other renewable resources are better! (Actually, this is true, but it’s not an argument to not build turbines, it’s an argument to build both!)
- It wouldn’t be effective here! (Wind maps are pretty good at predicting whether a placement would actually be useful, and monitoring for a couple of years easily yields good information.)
- Wind power isn’t any use anyway, it isn’t always windy! (This is often wrapped in babble about base load to confuse people, but the point is that there is wind some of the time, and it takes pressure off other resources.)
I can’t get over the depressing irony of people who live in Cheshire (a county that is mostly flat and close to sea level) campaigning against wind power.
Done right, and with benefits to the local community (decreased power costs for one, jobs for another), there really aren’t downsides.
Hybrid : Battery + Ultracapacitor… best of both worlds?
Batteries are great – they store a huge amount of energy for their volume and mass 
(i.e. a high energy density), but they suffer a number of side effects; They break down over time with charge/discharge cycles, they don’t deal too well with high temperature ranges (and they heat up when charging or discharging too as they aren’t so efficient), and they really struggle with big spikes of charging or discharging.
Introduce a capa
citor, and you smooth some of those problems, the battery needs to do less work. Capacitors don’t store much energy though, so their energy density is low, and compared to batteries they are very expensive! Ultracapacitors take the technology further, with better density and other characteristics, but can’t replace the battery (yet!). Getting the balance of the capacitor and battery would seem to be the trick…
This article goes a bit further into it -
5 FAQs about Hybrid Energy Storage
I love this – getting better efficiency out of a system just by using the most appropriate tool for the job, and combining them.
Posted in Energy Efficiency, Energy Storage, Transport
Tagged battery, capacitor, car, energy
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The answer, my friend
There’s a lot of doom going around right now. Concerns over climate change and ever more expensive energy reserves mean that one way or another, we’re all being affected by our energy usage.
Our insatiable thirst for easy and cheap energy is causing more and more problems every year, not just higher prices. The environmental damage is very gradual but harder to ignore, and there’s political problems too. Wars have always been fought over resources, and control of oil, gas, and coal is as important as ever.
If only there was a solution.
I’m sitting writing this, after many years of casual interest in the field of renewable energy, in a house in the North West of the UK. Right now there’s a 30mph wind blowing past.
It’s hard to believe that in the UK, surrounded by so much energy from wind, wave, tide, and even sun, that we are importing energy. Staggering, in fact.
My aim with this blog is to collect stories and progress in the field of renewable energy (and in particular wind!), and share them along with my own thoughts. I hope that I can provide a resource for others to work from, and maybe just inspire some other people with ideas too.
After all, it would be a shame to let all that energy go to waste!
Posted in General, Wind Power
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