posted
This is a thread dedicated to posting news of "innovative" technologies and energy "solutions" that violate the laws of physics.
Here we will post links to articles that report on proposed projects that violate basic physical laws and mock the proposers and the public who take them seriously.
This project is actually being debated in Utah and seriously considered by Utah's governor. He rejected it "based on environmental concerns". Forget the environmental concerns -- its a perpetual motion machine. It will without any question consume more energy than it generates.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
You didn't read the whole thing. It would use power during off-peak times to pump the water up hill. Then it would run the water through the turbines during peak power usage hours to generate the additional power. Denver has a similar system that has been working well for at least a decade. I think it is called Wolf Creek dam. I was there two years ago looking at the system. That being said; it is still a stupid idea at Bear Lake for all the reasons the 400 vocal environmental obstructionists gave.
Posts: 1167 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Artemisia Tridentata: It would use power during off-peak times to pump the water up hill. Then it would run the water through the turbines during peak power usage hours to generate the additional power.
Potentially saving money, but definitely not with any net gain of energy.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Yes, I read the whole thing but the company has never reported this as an "energy storage" project. In fact, they call it renewable energy
quote: Symbiotics LLC, in arguing for the project, pointed to hydroelectricity's renewable energy potential and claimed the project could meet about 85 percent of Utah's current peak energy demands if used in concert with conservation efforts.
This is just energy storage. It can't meet any demand. All it can do is take electricity produced at one point in time and "save" part of it for use at a different point in time. Its not hydropower and its not renewable unless they are using a renewable source to pump the water into the damn.
Since I've talk classes in the stuff to none science majors, I KNOW that a good fraction of the public, in reading articles like this will not grasp the fact that this only energy storage and not energy production.
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posted
OK, so I am getting old. It is Cabin Creek Dam. I don't know where the wolf came from. It is up the canyon from Georgetown on a very pretty alpine loop drive.
Posts: 1167 | Registered: Oct 2005
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I can't believe they are actually claiming he converts H2O to HHO which can then be burned as a fuel. They also gloss very quickly over the part that electricity is required to make this fuel from the water. A simple analysis of the first law will say if you start with water and end with water, you can't produce net energy.
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quote:Originally posted by Artemisia Tridentata: OK, so I am getting old. It is Cabin Creek Dam. I don't know where the wolf came from. It is up the canyon from Georgetown on a very pretty alpine loop drive.
I have no problems with the idea of pumping water uphill as a means to store energy. My problem is with the portrayal of this as "renewable energy" and the idea that this could meet "85% of Utah's peak energy needs". No it can't. It can't meet any energy needs.
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posted
I had a highschool science teacher who went through an automotive parts catalog, and wrote down all the gas savings promised by the various devices.
His figures showed that if you got all the devices, and connected them up, and if they all worked as efficiently as advertised, then you would have to stop the car every 5 miles to empty out the extra gas before it overfilled the fuel tank.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:My problem is with the portrayal of this as "renewable energy" and the idea that this could meet "85% of Utah's peak energy needs". No it can't. It can't meet any energy needs.
I agree with you about the portrayal as renewable energy. I disagree that it can't meet peak energy needs. There are two ways to meet peak energy needs - one is to have facilities to produce more energy at peak demand, and one is to store energy produced at non-peak demand for use at peak demand. Since this can store energy, it could (I don't know if it will) meet peak energy needs.
I do agree that once the company adds the renewable energy claim, their claims as a whole do become misleading.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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My favorite crackpots. They had a big scandal a decade or so back when they promised revolutionary wireless communication tech and never delivered. Now they are promising ultra cheap solar electricity (and have been for at least 3 years) and...still waiting.
They claim that a lens they make (or buy from a lens company, I think) is a "solar panel" and compare it to actual solar electricity panels. In actuality their product can merely focus sunlight to generate heat. A revolutionary product! They also have a heat driven turbine. Whoa!
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:I disagree that it can't meet peak energy needs. There are two ways to meet peak energy needs - one is to have facilities to produce more energy at peak demand, and one is to store energy produced at non-peak demand for use at peak demand. Since this can store energy, it could (I don't know if it will) meet peak energy needs.
I know I'm being overly technical, but storage isn't a way to meet a demand. Their claim is like saying you could meet 85% of your food needs by saving leftovers. You can "reduce" the need to buy food by using leftovers effectively, you can't meet your food needs that way. Its like saying you could provide 85% of the fuel for your car by regenerative breaking. No, you can reduce your demand for fuel by regenerating breaking, it can't be used to meet the demand. The way this is worded it sounds like if we could simply reduce our peak demand by 15% through conservation, this project could meet all our demands.
Perhaps that's an overly technical way of looking at this considering this was a newspaper. If the company had said, "By using energy normally wasted during off peak periods, this project could meet 85% of the increased demand during peak periods, I'd find it acceptable. As it is, its highly misleading.
Also from a quantitative prospective, the 85% number is absurd. As an engineer, I normally would interpret "85% of peak demand" to mean that they could routinely provide 85% of the total energy required at peak periods. If for example it is reported that a coal fired power plant can provide for 85% of peak demand and peak demand was 1 GigaWatt, that would normally mean that the plant could provide a constant supply of 0.85 GigaWatts. I suspect what they actually mean is 85% of the increase in demand during peak periods. You may think I'm splitting hairs but % is a meaningless term without know what's in the denominator.
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posted
Storing non-peak power to be used later as peak power is an excellent idea. I have great hopes that we can find some way of doing that which makes sense, instead of just building more and bigger power plants.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Storing non-peak power to be used later as peak power is an excellent idea. I have great hopes that we can find some way of doing that which makes sense, instead of just building more and bigger power plants.
I agree absolutely, but its not a new source of energy. Its just more efficient usage of our current sources.
[ April 23, 2008, 02:07 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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quote:I had a highschool science teacher who went through an automotive parts catalog, and wrote down all the gas savings promised by the various devices.
His figures showed that if you got all the devices, and connected them up, and if they all worked as efficiently as advertised, then you would have to stop the car every 5 miles to empty out the extra gas before it overfilled the fuel tank.
How did he do the math? Were they promising savings of percentages? And if they were, did he just add the percentages together?
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:I know I'm being overly technical, but storage isn't a way to meet a demand. Their claim is like saying you could meet 85% of your food needs by saving leftovers.
But if you are having company next weekend, storing your leftovers from this week can help meet the extra demand next weekend.
quote:The way this is worded it sounds like if we could simply reduce our peak demand by 15% through conservation, this project could meet all our demands.
I agree, but only because of the "renewable energy" claim made in conjunction with it.
quote:I suspect what they actually mean is 85% of the increase in demand during peak periods.
That's what I think they mean as well.
quote: You may think I'm splitting hairs but % is a meaningless term without know what's in the denominator.
I agree with you on this one for sure.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Storing non-peak power to be used later as peak power is an excellent idea. I have great hopes that we can find some way of doing that which makes sense, instead of just building more and bigger power plants.
I agree absolutely, but its not a new source of energy. Its just more efficient usage of our current sources.
So? Using our current sources more efficiently is an excellent idea.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:So? Using our current sources more efficiently is an excellent idea.
And I agreed with that. That was never my objection to this article.
My problem is with presenting a technology that can improve the energy efficiency as though it is an energy source. And there is a big big difference.
Wind Turbines, for example, can be considered a legitimate energy source because you can get a lot more usable energy out of a wind turbine than it takes to build one. So it is conceivable that we could meet all our energy needs, including building the wind turbines, with energy produced by wind turbines.
In contrast, hydrogen fuel can't ever be considered an energy source because it takes more energy to make it than you could ever recover by by oxidizing it. Similarly, this reservoir could never be a source of energy because it will take more energy to pump water into the reservoir than they could ever get out of the reservoir
I suppose that I should have acknowledge in starting this thread that there are two ways people in the news "violate the laws of physics" . The most common way is by making misleading statements about a workable technology. Less common, but still too common are proposals for technologies that could never work.
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posted
Perhaps it would be better if we started to refer to things like this as "batteries." Hydrogen, for example, is more a battery than an energy source.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote: I had a highschool science teacher who went through an automotive parts catalog, and wrote down all the gas savings promised by the various devices.
His figures showed that if you got all the devices, and connected them up, and if they all worked as efficiently as advertised, then you would have to stop the car every 5 miles to empty out the extra gas before it overfilled the fuel tank.
How did he do the math? Were they promising savings of percentages? And if they were, did he just add the percentages together?
First, this was many many years ago, so my memory isn't perfect.
Second, it was a combination of % Savings and phrases like, "Add 10 Miles to the gallon" and "Like adding 3 gallons to every tank of gas."
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I do agree with Rabbit that this is a really terrible article:
quote:The Article But others argued the project actually would have resulted in a net loss of electricity because it would take more energy to pump the water to the storage reservoir than the falling water could produce.
They say that as though this is something up for debate, or that there is a legitimate difference of opinion here, and completely miss the fact that this cannot be an energy source.
That said, I do think the idea of pumping water as a means of storage is interesting, especially in the context of longer term storage to average out fluctuations in renewable sources such as solar power.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
I seem to recall I posted a thread on precisely this subject a while ago, suggesting it as a money-saving measure for individual households.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I seem to recall I posted a thread on precisely this subject a while ago, suggesting it as a money-saving measure for individual households.
And I would have found that a potentially good suggestion, so long as you didn't claim it was a renewable energy source and you didn't discuss conservation of energy as though it was a controversial idea.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
It is a good idea, and it's not creating energy from nothing. But if you think about it, the power company has to build enough power plants to provide the PEAK energy levels, even though most times of the day and night, and most seasons of the year, the peak isn't demanded. The power company generates, moment by moment, exactly the electricity demanded by the customers at that moment. So of course, as Rabbit obviously knows, it makes very good sense and efficient use of the capital invested in power plants to generate extra power at non-peak times that can be stored in the form of the potential energy of water. It's about the most efficient storage method we have. Certainly far better than batteries, and with less environmental impact.
It's just not creating extra energy from nothing. You still use the fuel and such that it takes to generate it. However, the extra capacity that the power plant can't put to good use during off-peak times is an inefficiency that this storage method helps to lower.
What I really wish is that I could think of a good way to use the 60% or so of the energy released by my plants as waste heat. Surely there are many fortunes to be made there. Right now it's acting as a very awesome bird elevator. A worthy cause, no doubt. But it seems to me as though it could be put to some better use.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:What I really wish is that I could think of a good way to use the 60% or so of the energy released by my plants as waste heat. Surely there are many fortunes to be made there. Right now it's acting as a very awesome bird elevator. A worthy cause, no doubt. But it seems to me as though it could be put to some better use.
The second law of thermodynamics sucks!!
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Some places in Norway use it to heat housing. Not a very scalable method, though.
Its also not terribly practical in Alabama where a good fraction of the electricity is used for air conditioning in the summer months.
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quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: ... But if you think about it, the power company has to build enough power plants to provide the PEAK energy levels, even though most times of the day and night, and most seasons of the year, the peak isn't demanded.
I may point out that in many jurisdictions, you can't really just measure from the peak. For example in Ontario, the power plants in use include a large portion of nuclear, hydroelectric, and thermo (coal, natural gas). The standard operating procedure is that the nuclear power plants go 24 hours and the hydroelectric is used as needed first and the thermo is used as needed second.
Of course, you probably shouldn't use this method to store electricity from thermo, not only would you lose a lot in the energy conversion loss, but it would somewhat kill the environmental advantage. Hydroelectric usually already can store power in this fashion on its own via the reservoirs, for example at Niagara Falls the flow is greatly reduced at night in order to store up the water. So all these dedicated reservoirs could store at off-peak times would be any surplus energy from nuclear.
Working through the numbers in Ontario (36.6% nuclear, 25% hydro, 37% thermo) you'd only be able to conserve roughly (36.6% - off-peak use) which is probably pretty minor after the energy loss entailed in pumping water.
IIRC, it would even be less for the United States since the United States uses something like 50% coal, 20% nuclear, natural gas 20%, and 7% hydro. So something like (20% - off-peak use).
Still potentially useful granted, but far from saving right from the peak.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
Except for the fact that coal plants can take days to heat up to full power, and days to cool off as well, so it is uaully more cost-effective to keep them running at (or close to) full power rather than shut down their productions.
This is one way to store energy that has been used for years, and it is fairly effective.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
The same holds for nuclear power. With the exception of hydro-electric, most power plants run close to full power round the clock. They really can't easily ramp up and down with diurnal demand cycles. Seasonal changes can be made but not rapid changes.
Still the greatest potential for energy storage is for wind power. Winds tend to be not only intermittent but they also tend to peak at night when demand is lower. So hydro storage is a great companion for wind power. Wind could be used at night when demand is low to pump water into the reservoir. Then at midday when demand peaks, water could be released from the reservoir.
Hydrostorage is also a much better idea if you can pump the water into an existing reservoir. Reservoir construction is an environmental disaster.
Flywheels are probably a better bet for dealing with diurnal variations in energy demand.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: ... it is uaully more cost-effective to keep them running at (or close to) full power rather than shut down their productions.
I'm fairly certain that this is not the case, at least in Ontario. Here is one example:
quote:Ontario’s existing coal-fired generation capacity is used intermittently. In contrast, because of their capital-intensiveness, nuclear plants are best operated continuously. We show that replacing Ontario’s existing coal-fired plants with new nuclear plants operated continuously would easily create enough off-peak electricity to supply electricity for over one-third of the Ontario light-vehicle fleet if these were PHEVs or EVs in 2015. Annual CO2 emissions would be reduced by over 6 million tonnes.
The Rabbit: Thats pretty much what I said when I noted "nuclear power plants go 24 hours" and why both sets of my statistics for the power that can potentially be saved is using the nuclear power as a base.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
I didn't read the article so I may be missing the point but as was mentioned, the best candidate for energy storage is wind power I think Bear Lake may be a good place to start. I've stood on USU's campus at night and the wind that blows is significant.
Of course all of the arguments against the project probably outweigh benefits
posted
Here's a better reference that includes both coal and natural gas:
quote: Natural gas and coal-fired generation stations have the advantage of being able to manage demand shifts very well. During peak demand more units are turned on and during off peak hours the generators remain inactive. This allows the supply curve to closely match the demand curve throughout the day. The province will need a better means of controlling the supply-demand curve throughout the day.
Edit to add: I would also add that the previous link shows the Ontario generation data for 2005. During the year nuclear power was utilized at 90% of capacity, hydro at 52%, gas at 23% and coal at 45%. Meaning that coal-fired plants were actually off on average more than half of the the time and even less for gas.
posted
Coal plants are a little bit more efficient at it than nuclear plants, for sure, but I know engineers at coal plants and they are not great at shutting off and turning on power. Hydro-storage is a FAR more efficient tool than shutting off generators.
It takes 2-3 days fro a plant to warm up after being shut down for maintenance, but that is a complete shutdown.
posted
Coal plants and gas plants can't actually turn on and off like as Mucus' link suggests but they do go into a sort of standby mode where they are kept hot but the generators are not spinning under load. That way they can be ramped up quickly. The efficiency is lower when the plant is in standby mode than when its operating at peak, but its not nearly as bad as it would be is they were running at full power and wasting half the electricity.
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posted
I know that...I was wondering who else did as well.
They burn coal at almost the same rate, but produce less electricity because not all their generators are engaged, so it decreases efficiency. By using the generators, which run of the heat that is already being generated to keep the plant active, efficiency is raised even if all that electricity does is pump water....storing the potential energy.
Although, as Rabbit mentioned earlier, than only stores the energy rather than creating it in the first place.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: They burn coal at almost the same rate...
This seems especially dubious to me. Can you maybe source this? Perhaps your area just has a particularly bad coal-fired plant design?
Consider this debate:
quote:... Steve Erwin, a spokesman for Energy Minister Dwight Duncan, said the sources are mixed for the power that Ontario exports. Very little of it likely comes from coal, he said, because that power generation is only used on days when demand is at its peak.
He said if Ontario reduced the amount of power it exports, it would just mean the United States would step up production at their coal plants sending more dirty air across the border.
link This seems to indicate that emissions (and thus coal consumption) are proportional to energy production. If it were true that coal consumption was pretty much uniform regardless of electricity consumption, then the debate would be moot.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
Interesting. The two main storage methods I'm seeing when reading Green news are compressed air and salt. For compressed air, the excess power is used to compress air, which is released on demand to power a generator. For the salt, it works with solar power, and they heat the salt during the day, which stays hot during part of the night to provide power on demand while the sun isn't shining. I've seen a few other ideas being batted around too.
There's also a theory that once LION batteries become standard in cars, there will be a huge market for used batteries in energy storage at power plants. The batteries will lose their usefulness for cars when they fall below 80% capacity, but that still leaves a lot of capacity for commercial scale power, and purchasing these batteries in the cheap in bulk keeps them out of landfills, makes them cheaper, and makes energy cheaper. Thousands of megawatt hours of power are wasted at night every year. I've read a report that says that excess offpeak night power could power enough EVs to replace 84% of small trucks, cars of all kinds and minivans, the LDV fleet of he US, without ANY excess power generation, it's just using the stuff we don't use currently. It wouldn't require any extra technology on the part of the power companies, it would just require people to charge their cars at night, which could probably be done through two-mode pricing (make power cheaper at night and people will charge their cars at night).
It might not be renewable energy, but I think it'd be fair to call it recycled energy.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: ... I've read a report that says that excess offpeak night power could power enough EVs to replace 84% of small trucks, cars of all kinds and minivans, the LDV fleet of he US, without ANY excess power generation, it's just using the stuff we don't use currently.
I may point out that the first link that I posted focuses on this very topic Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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I talked to ma friend after posting, and he said that of course it costs more to run a plant at full power than it does overnight, but not by as much as most people think.
He said the fuel consumption drops by about 30% if the plant is run at 70-75%, but that his plants (he works at 3) rarely run at lower than 70% power because it isn't cost effective to do so. His plants produce a lot of power than isn't used at night....which is why storage plans like this are still worth while.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I missed that link sorry. The report I read was a comprehensive study about the whole United States, based on our current electric grid and power plants in place.
It's an interesting idea, and the thing is, it's still a good 20 years off before EVs really saturate the market enough to really make use of that energy, and by that time, we'll likely have a much more diverse generation capacity, which could include even more nuclear, making the idea look even more attractive.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Kwea: Hmmm, I appreciate that you did take the effort to talk to your friend. But when I said source, I meant something that I can get to and more independently verifiable than hearsay, if only because I AM interested in the subject and would like a more comprehensive source Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
Yeah, Mucus, this isn't the AAAS, this is an internet fora. If Kwea, a long time member, says he talked to a friend in the coal-powered electricity generation biz (presumably an engineer, tell me I'm not sticking my neck out for some PR flack Kwea), that works for me. Especially as it corresponds to previous info I've seen.
Counter the (presumptively good) post yourself, with a more comprehensive source, if you can Mucus. Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
I think some of the discrepancy between Mucus' source and what Kwea and I are claiming is because there are two kinds of peaks, diurnal and seasonal. There are a lot of smaller older coal and gas fired electric plants that may only run during the hottest summer months when demand for air conditioning peaks. Additional, larger facilities will typically have multiple lines of boilers and generators so they can totally shut down a portion of the plant in the off season. Between plants that are shut down 75% of the year and those that drop down by 30% at night, you might end up with the same answer.
The real problem is that Mucus' data is designed to address a slightly different question. That data addresses the question of how to build a more efficient electric system presuming that you can't store electricity from off-peak times for use at peak times. The answer to that question is that you need to be able to increase and decrease production rapidly. So even if your coal fire plant is 30% less efficient running at half power than it is running full power, there is a big savings from dropping to half power.
The question we are asking is how much improvement in efficiency you could get by storing electricity generated in the off peak. In this case, the most efficient solution could be to shutdown half the coal and gas fired power plants entirely, run the other half at full power 24/7. Store the excess generated at night and in the winter by pumping water into a reservoir and then use hydropower to meet the peaks. Its impossible to tell from Mucus' data how much more efficient such a system would be than it is to ramp the coal and gas plants up and down on a diurnal cycle.
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