Wind turbines get bigger and bigger

In Germany they use excess windpower to make hydrogen which they then pump into the gas grid. Makes a great deal of sense to me, gas space heating is very efficient so if it displaces electric space heating (which should be taxed out of existence) yoiu are on a winner. Making a liquid fuel would be even better, hydrogen is difficult stuff to store so I can run my car on it.

Forgot to include the link

**LINK**

The Germans are in the enviable position of renewables overloading the grid (resulting in negative spot prices for power) so this is a far better solution than curtailing generation and having to pay the turbine operators to switch off their turbines during a good period of wind generation (which is what occurs in the UK due to grid weaknesses).

Same for PV in the daytime, too. Why ‘waste’ wind and direct solar energy (PV), only to replace it with fossil fuel!

This facility was shut down in 2016, I haven't found any explanation, and a methane production facility is apparently being built on the site. Link (in German).

**LINK**

Thanks for the Link Duncan. That’s very clever. I wonder what they do with the Oxygen, sell it to industry?

This describes how electricity, water and carbon dioxide can be converted to methane using the Sabatier process where hydrogen (from electrolising water) and carbon dioxide are passed over a hot catalyst to produce methane and water

**LINK**

Not quite closed loop, you need 4 molecules of hydrogen to produce one molecule of methane and 2 of water, so it consumes more water than it produces, but water and CO2 are cheap enough, and as Vic says you get oxygen as a bi product.

You can also have a fuel cell which converts metahne back into electricity. Might sound like tail chasing, but you can easily store methane, so it's all a matter of economics as to whether it works. You could also do the conversion on site and then transport the methane, which might be better than extending the national grid to outlandish places like the Highlands of Scotland (only joking, but pylons are a bit of an eyesore in mountainous regions).

Duncan,that,s very rude ! No more Haggis for you,so there !!!

In my15 years in Saudi Eastern Province, I never saw any form of solar or wind energy generation. There were two desalination plants, the newer one built by Hyundai and the by-product from both of them was electricity. With fresh water being scarce, the desalination plants were working full time so very little need for alternative forms of power generation.
The alternative - bore water - tasted vile because of all the minerals - almost brackish at times - and I don't think anyone used it for drinking, or even washing.

I've been retired 6 years now, so things may have changed in the meantime.

Dave
The Emerald Isle

Abandoned wind turbines....................in America! I am not really surprised at, as their energy policy is firmly oil based, and the reasons they are abandoned are unlikely to be because they were innefective, much more likely to be political. Siemens have opened a new turbine blade plant in Hull, just down the road from me, and they are busy building the largest offshore wind farm in the world just off the Humber estuary, which is being built right next to the previous largest wind farm. I don't think we will ever see them abandoned in the UK, as we have the best wind patterns in the whole of Europe, even better than Germany, who have gone for wind in a big way, and are rapidly abandoning nuclear. Yes, I fully appreciate that some of the Sellafield mess is caused by warhead manufacture, that does not alter the fact that warheads are made from nuclear waste, and also that we, the taxpayers are picking up the tab for decommisioning, which will not be the case with wind farms, where the vast majority of the installation is directly and easily recycled. You don't work in the nuclear industry by any chance?

My last post is FAO roger B, sorry missed the intervening ones!

Steamdave, my comment ( tongue in cheek ) was in response to the eighth post by Stephen Millward who quotes a 200 bn investment by the Saudis. Colin

Ummm! Humber estuary - largest wind farm, should keep the population of seagulls down.

Phil,

I believe the wind turbines were abandoned when the subsidies stopped as it was no longer economical to maintain them. When the gearboxes failed there was no sense in replacing them. You made more money building new turbines and starting with another 20 years of subsidy. I expect the same will happen in other places as the turbines start to age.

I don’t think the German model is a good example. The have decided on political not technical grounds to shut down their nuclear power plants, they have invested Billions in wind power, have one of the highest electricity costs in the world and have failed to reduce their CO2 emissions which was the reason behind the Energiewende.

Most of the nuclear decommissioning work in the UK is linked to military usage. The first two piles at Sellafield/Windscale were solely for the production of military grade plutonium. Britain’s fleet of Magnox reactors were designed with a low energy density and online refuelling again to allow the production of weapons grade plutonium. The low energy density means that the cores are much larger and hence there is more active material to deal with at decommissioning. The low burn up required for the plutonium manufacture results in significantly more material being reprocessed and hence more waste. 5% burn up will produce ten times more waste than 50% burn up. Most of the costs of decommissioning are directly related to the military requirement for plutonium during the cold war period and as ever with the military the taxpayer pays for them to make the mess and then pays to clear it up afterwards.

No I don’t work in the nuclear industry but I do like to find the facts not follow the dogma.

Best regards

Roger

You only have to look to France to see a country that has invested heavily in Nuclear with over 75% generated http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/

Edited By Bob Brown 1 on 06/04/2018 12:35:30

On another forum I just learned that some Americans are using corn as central heating fuel. A form of solar capture made possible by high farm subsidies apparently like ethanol production but it just seems wrong. Like the solar farms along the M4 on prime agricultural land which thus also has the best weather conditions for collecting subsidy.

But Roger! In an earlier post you treated us to a link to 'American Thinker'. Did you not notice that their material is strong on dogma and weak on facts? I thought the site interesting and thoroughly untrustworthy. Their explanation of what went wrong at Enron is certainly different to the facts as I understand them.

I sympathise with your desire for facts though. It's just that I also think we have be extremely careful selecting them. Even engineers (who should know better) often fall into the trap of cherry picking evidence to suit an emotional opinion. We're all human...

Dave

Duncan: you mention the fact that pylons are ugly, which they are. At my home village on the Moray Firth two cables come ashore - one from the offshore Beatrice wind farm, and the other from wind farms in the northern isles. Before the electricity is fed into the national grid, it makes its first ten miles of its journey as DC through buried cables - apparently because DC does not suffer the same voltage drop as does AC over long distances. I confess to being a complete idiot as far as electricity is concerned, but is this the future of power transmission? The two cables should be operating soon.

Dave, I agree that the American Thinker has it's own agenda, but they will post pictures of abandoned wind turbines which the pro renewables sites tend not to due to their own agendas. You have to gather information wherever possible and try to determine it's validity.

Best regards

Roger

I think the advantage of the DC cabling onshore is that there is then just one DC/AC inverter needed to synchronize with the national grid rather than one per turbine and it's on-shore for easier maintenance.

I see no reason why DC of the same voltage as AC (RMS) would be more or less efficient to route via cable.

I would assume that each turbine will still generate AC which is then voltage converted and rectified to produce a near constant voltage DC.

On the subject of windmills.pylons.AC,DC,ect , I was led to believe that AC was easier to transmit over long distances than DC and that cables underground suffered from voltage drop.

No doubt there is someone out there who can correct me on this [no sweat,I have been corrected many times before ] I can see that putting them underground would be more expensive,and troublesome,no matter what they are,but why go to the bother of changing from AC to DC and then back again to AC.

As regards the pylons,no-one wants them anywhere near them,but how many of these same people would like to go without their light,heat,TV,electric blankets,ect,ect,and go back to the oil lamp and the candle ? Not too many I suspect. You can,t have your loaf and eat it.

PS Forgot to ask this--can DC be stepped up and down by means of a transformer,like AC,or is this a different matter ?.