A Self-Taught Garage Inventor Sees His Liquid Air Storage Idea Make the Big Time (cnbc.com) 129
Anmar Frangoul writes via CNBC: Work has started on a liquid air energy storage site in the northwest of England, with the team behind the project stating it will be one of the largest energy storage systems in Europe. Highview Power's 50 megawatt facility in Greater Manchester will harness technology that uses something called "air liquefaction." The system involves a number of steps: excess or off peak electricity powers an air liquefier. This cleans, compresses then cools ambient air, turning it into a liquid at -196 degrees Celsius (around -320 Fahrenheit). According to the company, this liquid air is "stored at low pressure and later heated and expanded to drive a turbine and generate power."
The technology being deployed by Highview Power stems from an idea developed by Peter Dearman, the brains behind the concept of a "liquid air engine." According to the U.K. government, Dearman -- who's been described by the BBC as a "self-taught backyard inventor" -- worked alongside a team from the University of Leeds to develop the idea of "using air as a form of energy storage" when compressed and liquefied. The new site, which is scheduled to open in 2023, will be operated by Highview Power in partnership with another firm called Carlton Power.
The technology being deployed by Highview Power stems from an idea developed by Peter Dearman, the brains behind the concept of a "liquid air engine." According to the U.K. government, Dearman -- who's been described by the BBC as a "self-taught backyard inventor" -- worked alongside a team from the University of Leeds to develop the idea of "using air as a form of energy storage" when compressed and liquefied. The new site, which is scheduled to open in 2023, will be operated by Highview Power in partnership with another firm called Carlton Power.
Help me out (Score:2)
Re:Help me out (Score:4, Informative)
Well, it is far less efficient than below sea level bulk compressed air storage. You inflate the flexible fabric storage vessel, the desired pressure defined by the depth at which you sink the storage vessel, using the water pressure instead of wall strength of the containment and the sea to push it back out again, boat anchors would be really bad news. Flow friction would not be that bad with air and of course any energy used to store the gas is nearly fully recoverable as air pressure on air motors and really consistent pressure, driven by the water pressure at the depth of where the high volume reinforced fabric storage vessel. You can store a whole lot down there and recover most of the energy on the way out.
You could use kilometre long tube of quite substantive diameter to transport compressed gas across the seas at the depth required to maintain desired compression of the gas. Way cheaper the liquid storage and whole lot simpler. Driven oddly enough by the depth of the offshore well, in this case the deeper the better.
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Well that really depends on what these other types of storage systems are? Do you mean as compared to traditional batteries or compared to other high capacity natural batteries? The former is pretty obvious, no rare earth metals, no hazardous materials, and the energy capacity is far higher. The later, well it's just another type of natural battery. My guess is that this method can be installed anywhere, which gives it an advantage over some other natural battery systems.
Re:Help me out (Score:5, Interesting)
All energy storage methods have drawbacks including this. A good energy policy should be more diverse in how it manages its energy. Including storing energy when it isn't needed and to be able to use it when it is. Flywheels (my favorite) will still loose energy due to friction over time. Batteries, have a limited number of charges and discharges, Pumping water to a higher altitude requires a lot infrastructure.
Gas compression is a valid method and when used with other energy methods, it can help diversify the energy production.
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Flywheels (my favorite) will still loose energy due to friction over time.
Flywheels usually hover in an magnetic axel in a vacuum, and hence: have no friction.
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Flywheels (my favorite) will still loose energy due to friction over time.
Flywheels usually hover in an magnetic axel in a vacuum, and hence: have no friction.
There is no such thing as "no friction." No vacuum is perfect and even magnetic bearings have drag. No matter how hard you try, parasitic losses will always come into play. It is impossible to build any machine that, once spun up, will continue spinning forever in a "frictionless" manner.
Re: Help me out (Score:2)
Do you know how silly it is to essentially declare someone stupid because of what country they're from? There are brilliant and educated people in every country on earth, and you have no idea whether the person you're talking to is American, or what their education level is. Declaring someone uneducated because they're American just reveals your own prejudices and sense of superiority.
Magnetic bearings have drag due to external fields causing eddy currents. Here's one example where it is discussed:
https:/ [osti.gov]
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The earth rotation is slowing down because of friction inside of the planet.
Similarly, a magnetically-levitated flywheel in vacuum changes because external magnetic fields are hard to stop and flywheels are imperfect. :D but was not the topic.
That is true
Re: Help me out (Score:2)
You're welcome to click on those links about Earth's rotation to prove yourself wrong.
A magnetically levitated flywheel is exactly what we're talking about. That was literally the topic. Magnetic bearings are based upon magnetic levitation.
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I did not think about earth rotation :D I wonder if there is strange effect at the equator, or if it would be stable there.
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Ah, I did not think about earth rotation.
Thanx for the infos.
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a frictionless bearing, thus violating the physical laws of the universe! There's a prize in this for you, mate!
There is no law of physic that disallows a friction less bearing.
infinitely-orbiting planets, both of which are physically impossible :P And for all matters that are important: the do infinitely orbit, as the universe will end before a plant crashes into its sun. (And while it can crash is to complicated for people like you to grasp)
They are actually not
Astronomical bodies undergo friction from t
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"Frictionless" implies a 100% efficient bearing. Such efficiency is impossible as it would allow the creation of a perpetual motion machine.
No, it would not. Perhaps you want to read up what a "perpetual motion machine" is.
After that nonsense I stopped reading, good luck with your "physics", I hope your life never depends on it.
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Flywheels (my favorite) will still loose energy due to friction over time. Flywheels usually hover in an magnetic axel in a vacuum, and hence: have no friction.
Unless I'm mistaken, most flywheels are connected to the automobile's crankshaft. While some flywheels may run in a vacuum, I think automobile engines are the most common location for flywheels. So I agree, flywheels will still lose energy over time.
Of course, most mechanical systems are imperfect. Despite that, we come up with ways to make them very useful. Flywheels should still be considered, whether in a vacuum or not.
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Can someone explain how this process compares to other energy storage methods?
Each major component of the liquid air system is pretty much known technology:
Each component can also be scaled up largely independent of the others, depending on what is needed. Each component is relatively cheap. The biggest down side is that its not really been put together
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The limiting factor I see is the ability of the system to absorb heat and boil the liquid air back to gas. Given ambient air is ~200+C warmer than the liquid that doesn't seem like a significant limitation.
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The primary issue that I see is that the the air is turning turbines that have spool-up times. That means these are going to either run at full speed to provide grid stability (wasting energy) or have some lag time between demand and supply. Natural gas plants have similar issues.
Also, the liquid air will boil off if not actively cooled. It wouldn't be suitable for set-and-forget energy storage. This is a short-term solution to address issues like the duck curve problem.
Reverse Molten Salt battery? How? Why? (Score:3)
I can't see how using power to freeze air is more efficient than using power heat salt.
Simple thermodynamics should mean that molten salt would be a better battery than liquid air. Can someone explain to me why the liquid air system is better than a molten salt?
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Re:Reverse Molten Salt battery? How? Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
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--Now you've got me wondering, why can't they just use glass?
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And pumped hydro is more than 80% efficient.
I'm feeling like there's a reason nobody else has done this yet....
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And pumped hydro is more than 80% efficient.
I'm feeling like there's a reason nobody else has done this yet....
Pretty much. My guess is the "self taught" person here primarily has sales skills.
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And pumped hydro is more than 80% efficient.
Building dams is expensive and environmentally destructive. But if you already have them, you should use them.
UK lacks suitable locations, and constructing elevated water tanks is obscenely expensive compared to liquid air storage.
The problem is the construction and operating costs of the liquefaction and heat recovery systems.
So they are building a pilot plant to see how it goes.
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UK lacks suitable locations
Does it? [anu.edu.au]
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It would probably be quite easy to store the excess energy in dams but I think the people and wildlife living around the spot you plan to put the reservoir might not like the idea as much. So it might actually be more difficult than you imagine.
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A molten salt storage can not be 70% efficient.
The maximum under "earth conditions" is 42%.
It is determined by the temperature difference of the hot side versus the cold side (measured in kelvin, to make it more simply to calculate).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
As molten salt is relatively "cold" I would guess it is around 35% efficient, to lazy to calculate it for you ...
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It is absolutely possible to get over 42% efficiency of a heat engine with earth temperatures. Not sure where you're getting you numbers from, but I just plugged the numbers into a carnot efficiency calculator. using 75F as cold side and 1500F as warm (NaCl melts at 1465F) I get 72.6% efficiency. Now my understanding is molten salt storage doesn't use pure NaCl, and has temperatures around 600F giving an maximum efficiency of around 50%.
Now actually getting those numbers, esp with turbines, is another matt
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Perhaps you should use Kelvin instead of F, facepalm.
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Oh I'm sorry. Here you go:
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You are just silly, so Carnot efficiency is close to 50% and the actually efficiency of modern power plants is 42%
No idea why you want to argue when you actually nicely support my point, rofl.
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Even if it could be 70% efficient it is still pointless. This plant is in the UK. The UK has enormous potential (we can do all the storage we will ever need in this manner) for pumped hydro storage that has not been developed yet which is around 80% efficient. It makes zero sense to build either a salt or air battery in the UK.
What we need in the UK at least is a whole bunch more pumped storage being built along with a small amount of battery storage. The latter because Tesla have shown in Australia that fo
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Sorry, you do not seem to grasp it. ... hence: there is no single pumped storage plant on the planet that has a as low as 705 efficiency - or even below - since 150 years
Pumped storage is far above 80% efficiency
The latter because Tesla have shown in Australia that for grid balancing you cannot beat the responsiveness of batteries
No, Tesla has not shown that. As pumped storage and gas turbines are - for everything that matters - equally as fast.
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I don't think Carnot's theorem actually says what is possible
Yes, it does.
But, AFAIK you can in fact get close to full round-trip efficiency with good enough heat pumps
No you can't.
There two/therr "laws of thermodynamics" - which are enough for laymen to grasp the principle, one is a true law, second is "simple thing to learn" and third is a rough number to memorize:
1) entropy will always increase over time - that is one you should remember
2) this is a layman's introduction to thermodynamics, more than that
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Supposing it has to do with latent heat... With molten salt, quite a lot of energy goes into the solid-to-liquid phase change, and you don't recover that unless you re-solidify it.
With the liquid-air approach, the phase-change energy is captured and used, and also the decreased volume of the condensed liquid improves energy density in storage. Bonus that the liquid air can simply be vented to the atmosphere when recovering the energy, unlike some other gases that might be better from a purely thermodynamic
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Yep. And it can vaporize with low temperature heat not useful for other purposes (river heating?).
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Pretty sure molten salt has some engineering issues as it is as corrosive AF. No real research done on my part though, so who knows? :D
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Has to be easier to store a low temp liquid than a high temp one. Plus I would bet that this method can release its energy much faster.
Why this works (Score:2)
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It doesn't however scale well for high power demand like daily peaks in demand but if we combined this with variable pricing to smooth demand then it could be a real game changer.
Actually it does.
It is easy to run your air storage for 20 minutes if you have a surplus of power and store liquid air.
And it is also easy to produce power for 20 minutes, or even 5 by accessing your storage.
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Which would you rather have released into the environment due to a catastrophic failure: Air or Salt?
That's a tough question.
You do realize that liquified air is a potent oxidizer, don't you? If there's a fire around a tank of liquified air then a leak in the tank would be like dumping rocket fuel on it. The liquid oxygen could burn through metal. The cold temperatures can cause all kinds of damage, and because it's dense cold air it will be a freezing cold cloud until it dissipates.
The kinds of salts used for energy storage are made of the same kinds used in fertilizer, or are quite inert. Rarely woul
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Liquid air contains liquid oxygen making it a potent oxidizer.
https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswer... [ccohs.ca]
There are other chemicals that are oxidizing materials. For example, liquid air has been involved in many explosions because of its oxidizing properties. Liquid air itself has about 30% oxygen which makes it a powerful oxidant. However, when liquid air evaporates, it becomes richer in oxygen content when more volatile components evaporate slightly faster. Liquid nitrogen is safer and is preferred to liquid oxygen as a cryogenic liquid coolant.
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The liquid oxygen could burn through metal.
It is not liquid oxygen, it is liquid air.
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No, it does not. Seriously? Read a book about it.
WTF, stupidity in the internet is so annoying to me.
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Salt! ... you mean that other salt? Never mind ...
I like a bit salt on ym steak or salad!
Oh
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Simple thermodynamics should mean that molten salt would be a better battery than liquid air.
Why do you use the word "thermodynamics", when you have no clue about it?
Can someone explain to me why the liquid air system is better than a molten salt?
With molten salt you are basically limited by the amount of salt and the maximum temperature you can heat the salt to (before the salt storage is melting).
Both systems are thermodynamic systems, that means the power they produce is
a) in the temperature difference -
What is the effcieny? (Score:2)
At the end of the day to factors that really matter are cost and efficiency, if its inefficient then it's not a good idea.
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Efficiency IS cost, so the only thing that matters is cost. If it is cheaper to store and use electricity this way instead of some other method, who gives a crap what the efficiency is?
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Cost to build is cost, and efficiency is the energy cost.
Re: What is the effcieny? (Score:2)
Method A requires 1000kWh w/ a total cost of $1000, of which electric energy was $100, to store 1000kWh.
Method B requires 4000kWh w/ a total cost of $500, of which electric energy was $400, to store 1000kWh.
Method A is 100% energy efficient, you put in 1000kWh and you got out 1000kWh...
Method B is 25% energy efficient, it has 4x the energy cost of Method A.
Ceteris paribus, the energy market will likely choose Method B because it's 1/2 the financial cost Method A despite requiring 4x the electric energy.
Poll
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Method A may also be quicker at responding to changes and so may be used for a small section of storage on that alone.
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who gives a crap what the efficiency is? /. - ers who know everything better than the people involved who are actually doing that shit.
Self taught
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At the end of the day to factors that really matter are cost and efficiency,
No, efficiency is not a big factor. Storage costs are much greater than generating costs, (except for very short-term) so 50% vs 80% efficiency is not important.
What matters is the bottom-line total cost. If construction and operating cost is low enough, very poor conversion efficiency can be mitigated just by adding more solar panels.
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At the end of the day to factors that really matter are cost and efficiency,
No, efficiency is not a big factor. Storage costs are much greater than generating costs, (except for very short-term) so 50% vs 80% efficiency is not important.
What matters is the bottom-line total cost. If construction and operating cost is low enough, very poor conversion efficiency can be mitigated just by adding more solar panels.
WInd turbines, not solar panels. The UK's investment in wind power is what's driving this. The variable nature of wind power is sometimes leading to negative prices [current-news.co.uk].
Throughout 2019, the UK saw a number of successive negative pricing milestones. In March UK power prices turned negative for six consecutive hours, which was described as "unprecedented" at the time.
In May, that record was broken when there was negative prices for nine hours. In December, Storm Atiyah saw the record once again broken, with thirteen hours as the UK had more wind power on its grid than ever before.
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Better then Queensland.
They hit the market price cap and floor in the same week because the grid operator told the solar plants to shut down and then allowed them all back in at the same time.
Found my own answer - Phase Change not Temperature (Score:5, Informative)
I originally (see earlier post) questioned the efficiency as I saw no way that a freezing/boiling process (liquid air) could be more efficient than a melting/boiling process (molten salt).
The molten salt requires: 1) Energy transfer from source to molten salt, 2) Storage loss by heat, 3) Energy transfer from molten salt to water 4) phase change to steam, 5) Steam Turbine to electricity
The Liquid Air requires: 1) Energy transfer to cause phase change in air, 2) Storage loss by pressure, 3) phase change to gaseous air, 4) Wind Turbine to electricity
I thought that as freezing was less efficient than cooling, it would not work well. But molten salt's also has the intermediary step of transfer from salt to water, which Liquid air avoids. A more significant savings.
Moreover, Liquid Air requires a temperature of -195 degrees Celsisus (lost as the temp does not contribute power) while molten salt requires a temperature to start at 260 Celsius (again lost as temperature till then does not transfer power).
Assuming a room temperature of 25 degrees C, Liquid Air has a sunk cost of 220 degrees, vs Molten Salt, sunk cost of 235 degrees. That 10 degree gain may not seem like much, but it is a constant additional cost that. In any non-equatorial area, the liquid air system should be more effiency. Perhaps if your starting room temp was 35 C (95 F) then you could begin to counter the loss from salt->water.
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Also salt is harder to handle and tends to wear and corrode stuff a lot more than air.
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I'm not sure why you'd say the temperature change doesn't contribute power. And the melting temperature of the salt is not terribly important since you heat it up once and then (hopefully) keep it above that temperature for the lifetime of the system.
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Not could. Must.
If your CO2 gets into the tank it will be a solid and cause problems.
This helps wind and solar power? Only? (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep reading stories on how some new energy storage technology is going to help wind and solar power but it seems that this is an unimaginative view.
Let's consider how this would work in reality. Assume a community that needs an average of one gigawatt of power. To get this power from only solar power means having to build a four gigawatt solar power facility, because the capacity factor of solar power is about 25%. Then there needs to be enough battery storage to provide power for the 12 hours that there is no sun. This is assuming one gigawatt average power demand and the demand will be lower at night than at the morning and evening peaks so that can be taken advantage of in planning the battery size. There will be some sunlight in the morning and evening peaks in demand but not near that of the noontime valley in power demand.
Now assume this same community is using something other than solar power. A steam plant that doesn't handle fast changes in output well, such as coal, natural gas, geothermal, or nuclear fission. Assume this community builds a single 1.21 gigawatt steam power plant with a capacity factor of about 85%. Most any steam power plant can achieve this kind of capacity factor. Now this plant can supply the power the community needs with an energy storage system because the storage allows for meeting the morning and evening peaks, and charge up all night for the next day. This means a far smaller storage system would be needed compared to the solar power example.
No community would realistically rely on only one kind of power, or on one power plant. This is an example on how storage technologies benefit more than just wind and solar.
Now imagine en electrical utility with a mix of electricity sources and an electrical energy storage system. They are going to realize very quickly how electrical storage benefits their steam power plants. This was shown in Australia when a large coal power plant had a failure and the battery pack Tesla built for them kept the lights on until they were able to power up some natural gas backup power to fill in for the lost coal plant.
Germany discovered that for every 4 megawatts of wind or solar capacity installed they needed to have 3 megawatts of natural gas power capacity in reserve. This isn't the efficient combined cycle natural gas turbines, it's the fast acting single cycle turbines that burn twice the fuel of the combined cycle turbines for the same output. Electrical storage means not needing as many single cycle turbines, in fact it may replace them completely. What happens though is that if there is enough reliable electrical generation capacity to cover the daily average demands for when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow then those windmills and solar panels might just look like a capital expense with no real income generating capacity.
If an electrical utility has access to "zero carbon" (or as close to zero as wind or solar) hydro, geothermal, and nuclear fission then wind and solar aren't even adding much to lowering CO2 emissions. They become a pure cost to the utility.
What saves onshore wind from this is that it is a very low cost, low tech, and low carbon power source. It doesn't displace crops, grazing, or wildlife like solar power does. Windmills also tend to produce the most power in the morning and evening when electricity demands are the highest. This offsets a lot of the cost of storage compared to solar, and is far lower in cost than solar to begin with.
Inexpensive and reliable electrical storage doesn't help solar power, it will kill it.
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I saw what you did there [youtu.be]:
Assume this community builds a single 1.21 gigawatt steam power plant [...]
:-D
Now, since I've catapulted myself out of moderation for this thread, while I'm at it, here some points I disagree with:
Germany discovered that for every 4 megawatts of wind or solar capacity installed they needed to have 3 megawatts of natural gas power capacity in reserve.
Germany is a bit of a mixed package, I'm afraid. The ruling parties heavily subsidize coal and gas to the point of ridiculousness. They had ~120.000 jobs in solar as of 2010, and cut them down to ~40.000 within less years than I can count on one hand, all with the argument that they needed to protect 20.000 jobs in coal and gas. Coal and gas is subsidized to more
Re: This helps wind and solar power? Only? (Score:2)
I don't know what subsidies for gas you are talking about, never heard of such.
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*sigh* Ok, then here we go, hunting links again...
There were no subsidies for lignite coal [...]
Yes, there are. [rp-online.de]
[...] and it is still the cheapest energy source there.
That's because it's subsidized.
I don't know what subsidies for gas you are talking about, never heard of such.
Search [lmgtfy.app] harder [heise.de].
If you really, truly, want to have an honest gauge about which is the cheapest form of energy power, turn to a totally unregulated, relentlessly financially motivated market: heroin production. [bbc.co.uk]
Spoiler: it's solar panels.
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Sorry for the botched up formatting, aparently I forgot to close a quote tag.
BTW, I took me all of 3 minutes while taking a dump to find the links above. It's not exactly like this was information difficult to find...
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And natural gas is subsidized because it is taxed less as car fuel than petrol. Seriously? You know what else is taxed less? Electric cars, well actually everything.
Solar is
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Ok, so they write that lignite is subsidized because the companies are not charged for recultivating old mines and health damages from emissions. You know how funny this statement must sound to someone outside Germany? Maybe you should look into Lithium mines, and how much these countries take care of recultivation and health damages.
No, they say that lignite is subsidized because it is treated differently than the rest of the comparable industry. If the standards of the country you talk about is to generally not care about recultivation and health damages, that sucks, but that's generally not the case for Germany. Only for lignite.
If you don't carry costs which you should, it equals less expenses. That's subsidy. There's a whole topic around this issue in Germany, and it's called "indirect subsidization". Pretty much like reduced VAT b
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And the regulation of lignite mining is grown historically. That being a subsidy is a big topic in the Green Party, not in Germany, from what I see.
Re: This helps wind and solar power? Only? (Score:2)
The car fuel taxation began before was electric was even a thing.
I think it's just the state being greedy again: if people need it, tax the hell out of it and generate revenue. There are things that are taxed even higher, like tobacco, in most of the EU.
Subsidy is a different shoe on a different foot, and fact is that Germany, the EU for that matter, has some nonsensical subsidies. Petrol and gas is one of the areas, agriculture a diferent one, large energy producers also join the club. I don't think that f
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Assume a community that needs an average of one gigawatt of power.
What a ridiculous assumption. Unless it's a remote island a community won't have its own power generation, it will be done at a national level.
Assume this community builds a single 1.21 gigawatt steam power plant with a capacity factor of about 85%.
That doesn't mean what you think it means. You seem to think that it means they can get an average of 1GW over a day, but an 85% capacity factor means that it will probably be out of action for 55 days a year.
The best option by far would be to have a large amount of distributed energy production, e.g. wind turbines with a small battery for smoothing. Over a large eno
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In reply to: https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
Well, Mr. Idiot, I tell it to you again:
To get this power from only solar power means having to build a four gigawatt solar power facility, because the capacity factor of solar power is about 25%.
That is wrong. The CF depend on where you build the plant and technology. Has nothing to do with solar or not solar.
A sun tracking PV solar plant in Arizona, e.g. obviously has a CF of 50 percent. Oops, 50 percent it is night, 50 percent it is day. Wow, that was so easy
Efficiency doesn't matter as much as you think (Score:4, Interesting)
It actually went negative a few times and went as high as $0.19 CDN. If you had a cheap way of storing lots of power, even if it was only 25% efficient you could make a fortune. Liquid air is actually perfect for this kind of market. Once you have the facility scaling up the tank is easy. If I was to do it, I would likely do it next to a salt mine and clean and dry my air once and then keep using the same air.
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In the UK a company called Octopus offers a tariff that tracks energy prices. When it goes negative you get paid to use electricity.
It sends pricing information via the internet in 15 minute intervals. With smart equipment you can do stuff like only charge your car when the price is below X, or turn on your immersion heater when it goes negative.
Once this sort of thing becomes common the price won't go negative any more, and it won't peak so high. But it will still encourage off-peak usage. And yes, you can
How is this different from liquid nitrogen? (Score:2)
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If they can separate out some portion of the oxygen, it would help the process, in that liquid oxygen is a valuable industrial product. Oxygen, as well as argon, are portions of air that condense before the bulk nitrogen.
Efficiency will be a matter of what you do with the heat. When you compress and liquefy it you get heat as a waste product, when you let it boil to get the power out, you need to provide heat. You can consider 'cold' as a useful by-product in some circumstances. But if you can somehow store
I doubt this is efficenct (Score:2)
Because of physics I doubt that liquefying air is cheaper than simply compressing it, you need a higher thermal gradient or more compression, this drives efficiency down. I would bet that liquefying air would be the least efficient method, and lower than compressed air which is lower than other conventional methods.
"Compressing and decompressing air introduces energy losses, resulting in an electric-to-electric efficiency of only 40-52%, compared to 70-85% for pumped hydropower plants, and 70-90% for chemic
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Seriously? Why make up numbers when they are easy to google?
There is most certainly not a single pumped hydro plant with a 70% efficiency.
Compressing and decompressing air introduces energy losses, resulting in an electric-to-electric efficiency of only 40-52%,
That does not make any sense either. Where should the loss be?
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The loss is in the heat cycle, compressed air systems have heat losses when compressing and also have additional losses with motors ect. Pumped hydro has only motor losses and a small amount from friction
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Correct. :D Grasp it or don't grasp it, up to you.
And that still makes it clear that there is no single pumped storage plant with 70% efficiency
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Show me a compressed air storage system that does better than 50% and a pumped hydro that does worse. Real world results.
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Why would I do that?
What has that to do with the topic?
BTW: the highest compressed air efficiency plant is in Switzerland, with 72% efficiency. Google/Wikipedia is your friend. If you want to find a pumped hydro storage with less than 81% efficiency, for what ever reason, then you have to do that work your self. Why would I do that?
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Thats a compressed air storage and thermal system, they save the heat, that won't be able to happen above ground. Apples to oranges.
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And why does that matter?
There are not many "above the ground" compressed air storages.
That makes not much sense energy wise.
Off to the pub they go! (Score:2)
Dearman also invented a liquid air engine..! (Score:2)
Fascinating. I figured I understood the storage concept but then found this 2015 article which blew me away. They are developing technologies that would use liquid air (perhaps nitrogen overflow from existing plants) in an engine instead of gasoline for example. Article is from Windpower in 2015 suggesting wind turbines might be interested in it..
https://www.windpowerengineeri... [windpowerengineering.com]
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So, what will happen when a car powered with a liquid air engine collides with a Tesla equipped with flammable Lithium-ion battery?
The actual capacity (Score:2)
They really mean a power output of 50 Megawatts here. The storage capacity is 250 Megawatt hours.
Nice story. (Score:2)
People - and the media - do love a story about the garage inventor - that lone genius who, though creativity and intelligence, brings about the advance that changes the world.
It can happen. It just hardly ever does. This "self-taught backyard inventor" also "worked alongside a team from the University of Leeds." Engineering is hard, and usually a group project.
They should use it for cooling (Score:2)
One obvious advantage of this system is the âoewaste coldâ that will be generated when the air is expanded and absorbs heat from the environment.
If designed intelligently, this can be used to freeze things, air condition nearby buildings (perhaps via a cold water circulation system), or keep a data center VERY cold for free.
This may not be a huge need for the UK, but may prove very useful in places like Texas or the Middle East where cooling is a major energy expenditure.
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If they don't remove the CO2 would become a solid in their system and cause problems.
I don't think it would make a difference in the global CO2 levels though.