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Post by John on Nov 18, 2013 16:10:12 GMT -5
Not very from what I read!
The big wind turbine generators need lots of material to manufacture the "rare earth" magnets, most of those rare earth magnets come from China.
The "mining" of rare earths and processing is polluting rivers and water tables in China big time to where drinking water is becoming scarce..
Solar modules seem to be mostly made in China these days, not sure of the manufacturing process over there, but the last stateside manufacturer, if it's still in business, was using solar power to make the cells for the module, which would be a pretty "high" on the list for green energy..
Thumbs down for wind though!!
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Post by shropshirebloke on Nov 18, 2013 16:42:35 GMT -5
Our local power station, Ironbridge (a couple of miles from where we live), is now burning 'biomass' - that's 'swamp timber' from endangered habitats in the southern US. It's felled, dried and pelleted, trucked to a port, shipped across the Atlantic to Liverpool, then brought by train to be burnt to generate electricity (until the end of 2015 when the plant closes under the EU directive).
Meanwhile...surveys in the 1930s, then in more detail by the NCB in the 1950s, showed that the area between the Shropshire, Stoke and Cannock coalfields holds millions of tons of unworked (but workable) coal.
I'm no expert but...
PS - I'm a partner in a small printing business these days - paper prices have gone bloody daft because all the rubbish timber that used to be used to make paper now fetches twice the price (thanks to taxpayer subsidies) when it's burnt to produce 'green energy'.
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Post by John on Nov 18, 2013 17:57:37 GMT -5
Our local power station, Ironbridge (a couple of miles from where we live), is now burning 'biomass' - that's 'swamp timber' from endangered habitats in the southern US. It's felled, dried and pelleted, trucked to a port, shipped across the Atlantic to Liverpool, then brought by train to be burnt to generate electricity (until the end of 2015 when the plant closes under the EU directive). Meanwhile...surveys in the 1930s, then in more detail by the NCB in the 1950s, showed that the area between the Shropshire, Stoke and Cannock coalfields holds millions of tons of unworked (but workable) coal. I'm no expert but... PS - I'm a partner in a small printing business these days - paper prices have gone bloody daft because all the rubbish timber that used to be used to make paper now fetches twice the price (thanks to taxpayer subsidies) when it's burnt to produce 'green energy'. |
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Post by shropshirebloke on Nov 18, 2013 18:20:30 GMT -5
Good point about hemp, John, but my moan about paper prices was only a 'PS'. It can't make sense to generate electricity using a fuel that costs more in energy for processing and transport (mainly diesel and bunker oil) than it actually yields in electical output. The closest analogy I can think of at this time of night would be using fuel in the States to compress air (at stupidly low pressure - read 'energy density') then ship it over here to drive pneumatic-powered generating plant. Of course, it makes great sense to the power companies if they can reach into the bottomless purse of the people needing energy...
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Post by tygwyn on Nov 18, 2013 19:23:16 GMT -5
Are there Rare Earth Magnets in wind turbine generators?
Apparently the clowns in westminster subsidise Drax to the tune of nearly 1 billion to go Bio,
Them Yanks used to send us their dirty coal years back,now they send us swamp wood before its turned to coal,lol.
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Post by John on Nov 19, 2013 7:12:22 GMT -5
Are there Rare Earth Magnets in wind turbine generators? Apparently the clowns in westminster subsidise Drax to the tune of nearly 1 billion to go Bio, Them Yanks used to send us their dirty coal years back,now they send us swamp wood before its turned to coal,lol. Yes they are DC generators that feed to inverters, much like the small home type units work, the whole system can be likened to home "grid tied" systems, but on a lot larger scale. |
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Post by John on Nov 19, 2013 7:14:12 GMT -5
Good point about hemp, John, but my moan about paper prices was only a 'PS'. It can't make sense to generate electricity using a fuel that costs more in energy for processing and transport (mainly diesel and bunker oil) than it actually yields in electical output. The closest analogy I can think of at this time of night would be using fuel in the States to compress air (at stupidly low pressure - read 'energy density') then ship it over here to drive pneumatic-powered generating plant. Of course, it makes great sense to the power companies if they can reach into the bottomless purse of the people needing energy... Hemp is on the banned list at the moment, as it's a close relative of marijuana plants, but was grown to make the finest ropes in the world, the navies of the world used them on the old wooden warships...Plus it was used for the finest quality paper. |
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Post by Wheldale on Nov 19, 2013 8:03:04 GMT -5
Drax is converting 3 of its 6 units to biomass. Its neighborough Eggborough is looking at converting all of its 4 units to biomass. Biomass wood pellets are classed as renewable, its said that they are only returning the same amount of CO2 to the atmosphere as was absorbed when the tree was alive. I would argue that must be the same case for coal, coal made from tree's etc.
To get the same amount of energy from Biomass you have to burn roughly double the amount as you would have if you were burning coal. So in the case of Drax they would be looking to burn upto 30000 tonnes a day of biomass.
Biomass gives of CO2, when you factor in the CO2 in transportation costs of shipping it from the USA (typical UK government, (we could be held to ransom here)you are looking at potentially 50-85% increase of CO2 output compared with coal. Plus the government are paying large subsidies to use biomass, Drax could potentially get £1 billion pounds a year. That money comes from joe public's energy bills.
I believe friends of the earth are against this, for Drax atleast they need to harvest 30000 tonnes of timber + everyday. How many football fields is that?
incidentally,anyone looking at renewing their boiler, look at biomass. You get a grant and enter a 20 year contract with the government whereby you'll end up making money, its similar to solar energy.
So for some forms of green energy, its not really green but its a good way for people to make shed loads of money by polluting the earth more!
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rob52
Shotfirer.
Posts: 199
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Post by rob52 on Nov 20, 2013 7:31:13 GMT -5
From an electrical protection/Supply Authority perspective, Solar Power and Wind Power are both weak infeeds and lead to Electrical Protection and Network Switching/Isolation challenges. Both Solar & Wind should be viewed as "Energy Saving ONLY" rather than "Reliable, Schedulable Base Load Generation" Solar panels on your roof…seemed like a good idea at the time…BUT…. "the peak power output from the Solar panels is not coincident with peak network demand", plus the system impedance at 230V is high in "per unit terms" so the voltage rises on the inverters to say 260V impressed on the domestic residence wiring, their Modern 220V nominal CFL's last maybe 500Hrs (lots of mercury off into land fill) at 260V if the Inverter does not trip out the cheap Chinese made light fittings with poor material science in the terminal blocks and small surface creepage distances, this is producing an increase in house fires particularly for houses near the coast with surface creepage distances coated in salt mist in humid conditions ...because all good Green Power Users like to live near the ocean. In my opinion the only Solar that should be permitted on Domestic premises is off Grid Gas Backed Solar Hot Systems. Wind Power another great Green Power idea……..Power output is proportional to (wind velocity)^3, the power output from the wind turbine is not coincident with peak network demand, if the wind speed increases beyond the nominal range and the blades cannot "Yaw" fast enough the turbine trips off…. so you go from full output to Zero in sub 5ms and the Base Load Generators have to pick up the short fall in Generation Dispatch or you have to instigate Load Shedding in addition the Wind Turbines typically have minimal Fault Ride Through Capability and typically cannot supply VARs into a fault even if they are DFIG's. Comparison of Fault Ride-Through Strategies for Wind Turbines with DFIM Generators......makes for interesting reading June 2013 Article Improving Fault Ride-Through Capability of DFIG-Based Wind Turbine Using Superconducting Fault Current LimiterFrom Network Modelling completed, dependent on the "Electrical Transmission & Distribution Network", when Government Subsidised Solar & Wind Green Power (well that is the only thing that makes it viable) exceeds 20% (to absolute maximum of 30%) of the Installed Generation Capacity you end up with a Network Stability problems particularly for "Fault Ride Through" even when the Interconnection to the Supply Authority contains the ability to supply VAR's. The best "Green Power Option" available to Australia is Geothermal Hot Rock but it is a political football and a geothermal resource is much harder to find with significant exploratory Drilling Costs that are not guaranteed to produce a result. I'm a realist in Australia where we have minimal water for Hydro (Australia is an essentially arid continent, with 80% of the land having a rainfall less than 600 millimetres per year and 50% having even less than 300 millimetres per year.) for the present we require multiple 4 x 660MW Coal Fired Base Load Power Stations to pick up the ready loss of output from (uncertainty of) the "Green Power Energy Saving Solar & Wind options". Rob |
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Post by John on Nov 20, 2013 11:06:29 GMT -5
There's a couple of geo powered schemes in the California coastal ranges, last I heard when we lived in California, the last one was shutting down due to mineralization of the plant.. I forget now how many units were in operation at one time, but they go back over 30 years in age.
Driving along Interstate 80 from the west to east going through Nevada and Utah, south of the freeway are several geo thermal power stations, albeit, not large units, but still playing their part in renewable energy.
You also pass huge coal deposits in Utah, again looking south of the freeway, town names reflect coal mining, Coalville, etc..
I'm in the process of installing an "off grid" solar/wind generating plant at my house. My main reasons are the rising costs of electricity, it's forecast prices will double in the next couple of years with possiblity of rationing! Four huge stations are going to be shut down next year due to new EPA rules being implemented...
Parts of the US have been having power shortages at peak times for a number of years now, like southern California during peak summer usage caused by air conditioners....
I've installed two 4Kw continuous pure sine wave inverters, one switched on full time the other as a slave so when load reache the 4Kw mark, the slave powers up automatically..Both are load sensing, so as to reduce battery drain at all times.
Once up and running, my thoughts turn to adding a "grid tied" system of say 2Kw for the workshop power to reduce monthly bills for it.
I don't know how other countries regulate "grid tied" systems, but our US NEC stipulates in a grid tied system, the inverters MUST automatically disconnect from the grid should a power outage occur.
There must also be an accessible manual means of isolation between inverters and the utilities supply as a backup for utilities employees.
All solar modules must also be fused with some means of manual isolation between the inverters and the modules.
Plus warning stickers/notices be placed on the modules, remember these will be rated at somewhere around 400volts DC output in bright sunlight, so rules are pretty stiff.
As a safeguard, NEC rules stipulate the negative pole of solar grid tied systems MUST be solidly grounded, (earthed) at the modules themselves.
Always a good idea to cover them with a blanket in the daylight hours to work on them!!
Most HV solar modules have shunt diodes across them for minimum lightning protection, but require series diodes to prevent "backfeed".
I was reading the rules imposed by our utility a year back, they have had to alter some as they violated state and federal law which tries to encourage everyone to instal a grid tied system. Our utility required an engineers inspection of all grid tied systems, and to send the full report to them before connection is authorized... That violates state and federal laws, not only expensive, but unnecessary.
All equipment must meet NEC practices..So all inverters are already compliant with automatic disconnect in a power outage.
They require a short time to fire up when powered up, they have to sense the supplied voltage and lock onto the mains frequency.
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Post by dazbt on Nov 22, 2013 5:25:22 GMT -5
Wind power is OK as long as you don't plant turbines in windy places !! 
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Post by John on Nov 24, 2013 16:24:19 GMT -5
Wind power is OK as long as you don't plant turbines in windy places !!
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Post by Wheldale on Nov 25, 2013 7:47:12 GMT -5
Give it afew more days and some pikeys will have it on the back of a van and take it to the local scrap yard. It'll probably make more in scrap that it did while producing electric!
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Post by shropshirebloke on Nov 25, 2013 16:35:09 GMT -5
Give it afew more days and some pikeys will have it on the back of a van and take it to the local scrap yard. It'll probably make more in scrap that it did while producing electric! I dunno - in the UK wind farm operators can be paid more for turning their turbines off than they get for producing power, when the National Grid can't handle the output. Anyroad, you mustn't use the word 'pikeys' - it upsets all the decent, honest, hard-working, tax-paying salt of the earth travelling people who we all so much admire...their quaint sanitary habits keep the hedges fertilised round our way, and without their caravans the car parks on our local factory estates would be nothing but a wasteland of workers' cars... |
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Post by Wheldale on Nov 26, 2013 7:47:11 GMT -5
Here's an interesting link, lots of interesting articles about companies fiddling figures to get planning permission passed for wind turbines. www.windbyte.co.uk/index.htmlIf its true it seems even Greenpeace members are on the fiddle! |
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Post by Wheldale on Dec 16, 2013 10:07:47 GMT -5
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Post by smshogun on Feb 23, 2014 21:22:24 GMT -5
Our fabrication division produce vortex acceleration units for water, they make much more sense as rivers always flow and they rise and fall with the seasons which means rivers rise to give a greater head of water in the winter when demand is at its greatest, the beauty? they work tear round, continually produce, are fairly consistent in their output, and you can control them to a large degree.
Fabricated from steel or stainless means they are durable, long lived, and they can be installed anywhere where there is a water supply and a head of 2 metres upwards depending upon the size of the unit. They work very simply by spinning the water into a vortex and the following water creates hydraulic pressure to power it, this pressure is virtually constant to keep the output constant, and surplus runs over the top in the usual waterfall manner.
If you look around the country we will see many weirs which are wasting water and wasting lots of potential energy and most of these could be utilised to produce electricity. One pilot project we currently have running uses one such weir, it is a compact system driven through a sluice into one of our larger vortex accelerators and the whole lot is housed underground so doesn't blight the landscape, the local farmer even grows crops on it, being a conpact assembly means they can be scaled up and used alongside any rivers or streams and produce electricity for free, but then we all know if there's no profit in it the big boys ain't interested. |
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