Germany had so much renewable energy on Sunday that it had to pay people to use electricity

originally posted by: odzeandennz
the US and China and Japan are soon to follow in the alternative energy race.



j/k

Doubtful unless the fossil fuel lobby is all on vacation.

a reply to: Swills

Is Germany taking money from the people in the form of taxes and then rationing it back to the people to create the illusion that these technologies are economically viable / superior to fossil fuels? If I am reading this right this sounds like a big scam and the little guy is getting screwed (as usual).

a reply to: Metallicus

I dunno how Germany operates but how do you come to the conclusion they're screwing their people?

a reply to: ManFromEurope

utter twaddle - a gas powered plant cannot provide power " in seconds "

the only technology that can go from standby to ` supplying the grid ` in seconds are pumped power facilities

we have 2 in the UK - tanygrisiau and dinorwigg [ wales ] - they can go from standby to 60MW in 40 seconds

they were purpose built to do this - conventional hydro are slower and anything with boilers and steam turbines has a lead of over 1 hour to ramp production

Germany needs flow batteries to use for peak storage like the one mentioned in OP. Then, when the sun sets and the winds die down they can pump the electricity back on to the grid.

ATS thread - Has The Great Flow Battery Battle Started?

It is mine... disclaimer.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

Seems like we haven't built one recently.

Commissioned in 1963, Ffestiniog Power Station was the UK's first major pumped storage power facility. Although of an older generation to those at Dinorwig, Ffestiniog's four generating units are still capable of achieving a combined output of 360MW of electricity - enough to supply the entire power needs of North Wales for several hours.

When it was fully commissioned in 1984, Dinorwig Power Station was regarded as one of the world's most imaginative engineering and environmental project.

. . .

Dinorwig's reversible pump/turbines are capable of reaching maximum generation in less than 16 seconds. Using off-peak electricity the six units are reversed as pumps to transport water from the lower reservoir, back to Marchlyn Mawr.

. . .

Pump storage generation offers a critical back-up facility during periods of excessive demand on the national grid system.

www.fhc.co.uk...

Britain has four pumped storage facilities, which can store 30 GWh be-
tween them (table 26.4, figure 26.6). They are typically used to store excess
electricity at night, then return it during the day, especially at moments of
peak demand – a profitable business, as figure 26.5 shows. The Dinorwig
power station – an astonishing cathedral inside a mountain in Snowdonia
– also plays an insurance role: it has enough oomph to restart the national
grid in the event of a major failure. Dinorwig can switch on, from 0 to
1.3 GW power, in 12 seconds.
Dinorwig is the Queen of the four facilities. Let’s review her vital statis-
tics. The total energy that can be stored in Dinorwig is about 9 GWh. Its
upper lake is about 500 m above the lower, and the working volume of 7
million m3 flows at a maximum rate of 390 m3/s, allowing power delivery
at 1.7 GW for 5 hours. The efficiency of this storage system is 75%.
If all four pumped storage stations are switched on simultaneously,
they can produce a power of 2.8 GW. They can switch on extremely fast,
coping with any slew rate that demand-fluctuations or wind-fluctuations
could come up with. However the capacity of 2.8 GW is not enough to
replace 10 GW or 33 GW of wind power if it suddenly went missing. Nor
is the total energy stored (30 GWh) anywhere near the 1200 GWh we are
interested in storing in order to make it through a big lull.

www.withouthotair.com...

Pumped storage is a well proven technology in use in Scotland and across the world. The Cruachan station on Loch Awe became fully operational in 1967 and was the first reversible pump storage hydro system to be built in the world. Cruachan generated 885 GWh of electricity in 2008



The Foyers hydro electric scheme was originally built by the british Aluminium Company in 1896 to power an aluminium smelter and was the first large-scale commercial hydro-electric scheme in the UK. It was redeveloped to focus on pumped-storage in 1969.

www.scotsrenewables.com...

a reply to: Swills

Government subsides are in fact being paid by the same people they are given to except that first Government takes a big chunk for the Bureaucracy and then rations it back to the people for pennies on the pound.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

Flow batteries have that beat. The can supply power in 0.64 milliseconds. They can be used like a UPS for your computer but for the power grid.

The reason I started following the tech was if this (OP's article) happens at peak reusable generation times, what will happen if a fusion device is turned on? Even just 100 MW of power being generated 24 x 7 x 365 is a lot of energy! The answer is energy storage.

The solar-wind farm in China is huge. They use flow batteries as storage when they have low/no reusable energy times and to do load balancing/peak shaving during normal operation.

Germany has solar cells lining their highways! No wonder they had an excess!

originally posted by: quercusrex
a reply to: Bedlam

I always looked at coal as the ultimate in solar energy storage mechanisms. Big chunks of solar power all preserved neatly.

It is also a carbon storage scheme that has been locking up excess carbon for hundreds of millions of years, along with oil. I think releasing it all in decades is an exceptionally dumb idea.

What an interesting thread, I can see why Germany decided to do away with nuclear power plants, I presume Fukashema was the excuse they needed. Is that spelled right?

a reply to: pikestaff

The triple 'China Syndrome' meltdowns provided sufficient excuse.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

If you combine the time to power up a gas-powered turbine with the modern accuracy of wind-predictions, you get a poweron in seconds at the moment the wind stops blowing. Modern providers do just that.

How many MWh can those hydro-storages provide?

a reply to: Metallicus

Or.. it is an efficient, even cost-efficient technique which does not produce any further pollution beyond its own production!

Is that a bad thing? Hey, I LOVE to pay for something which REALLY helps to save the environment! Compare them to a coal-powered plant. Or, worse, to a nuclear power plant.

THOSE are the polluters! If(!!) anyone denies that, I want to see actual studies, actual data!

I myself can provide just that: Gemis database download.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

The original quote you responded to was:

Just power up a gas-powered turbine and *bam* you have megawatts in seconds.

Running a search:

powergen.gepower.com...

70 MW/min ramp rate. That means in 5 seconds you have almost 6 megawatts. Megawats in seconds, you got it.

EDIT: I found a better one.

powergen.gepower.com...

100 MW/min ramp rate.

and

"• Emergency response rate of up to 500 MW/minute
(50 MW in six seconds demonstrated)."

Of course, it has to be running in the first place to get those ramp-rates.

originally posted by: SLAYER69
From what I've read, Fusion power will hopefully be a reality in our lifetime...

Nuclear fusion nears efficiency break-even

&

Lockheed says makes breakthrough on Fusion Energy project

Fusion would really be the ultimate for energy production and could be on the way in the next 20 or 30.

Solar and wind are OK but don't provide reliable 24/7 365 energy production and need big government subsidies to compete with cheaper coal and gas power. With battery storage they are more effective and can store energy for when it's needed but this adds to the cost.

Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH) is an interesting idea and can add to the effectiveness of wind and solar power but again adds to the cost.

en.wikipedia.org...

For global energy production coal is still king and Asia has over 1,500 coal fired plants on the drawing board now.

a reply to: Swills

That's fantastic.

So...it can be done, the 20% max energy from renewables is obviously crap. We can generate 100% of our energy from renewables, and ditch dirty fossil and dangerous nuclear...so the real question is...why haven't we?