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Wind-pumped hydro electric storage

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  • 25-10-2011 3:25am
    #1
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugk2_tI6AN8

    Scientists at Clausthal University of Technology are investigating whether it is possible to use inactive mines to store energy. To address the problem of supplying uninterrupted power generated from wind and water, electricity producers need new storage technologies.
    The scientists say underground power plants can help. Solar and wind energy can be used to bring large quantities of water into basins above mines. At times when wind and sun is scarce, the water can be released through a shaft to drive a power producing turbine. They say it is a way to preserve the natural landscape and use decommissioned mines as rationally as possible.


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    #2
    easychair
    Closed Accounts Posts: 905 ✭✭✭easychair


    Deleted User wrote: »
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugk2_tI6AN8

    One doesn't need to be a scientist to come up with this, and all that is new is the idea of using old mines for pumped storage.

    It sounds to me as if these particular "scientists" are more likely to be trying to drum up some publicity for "Clausthal University of Technology", (where that? ed.) rather than putting forward anything new.

    One doesn't have to think too long to spot the flaws which will, probably, make this not viable economically.


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    #3
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    Depends on how expensive & available the alternatives will be in the future!


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    #4
    djpbarry
    Registered Users Posts: 13,104 ✭✭✭✭djpbarry


    easychair wrote: »
    One doesn't have to think too long to spot the flaws...
    Off you go then.


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    #5
    BryanF
    Moderators, Home & Garden Moderators Posts: 10,140 Mod ✭✭✭✭BryanF


    seems like a perfectly good idea to me, its just a variation of this: http://web.archive.org/web/20030430003158/http://www.jcold.or.jp/Eng/Seawater/Outline.htm and its the same thing the spirit of Ireland group attempted to get going just as Ireland imploded.


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    #6
    easychair
    Closed Accounts Posts: 905 ✭✭✭easychair


    BryanF wrote: »
    seems like a perfectly good idea to me,

    One wonders how good an idea it will be when one tries to "fill" an abandoned mine with water, only to find that it's doesn't fill and the water runs away through one of the many cracks or fissures. Mines are not reservoirs, and are more usually large and complex underground areas which are porous and not designed to hold water, but are designed to allow water to drain away.

    Then, if by some miracle, you could fill a mine with water, the sheer weight of the water would be likely to burst through underground until it finds an outlet. Remember, one cubic meter of water weighs one tonne. Mines are rarely stable places, abandoned mines even less stable.

    It might be possible to construct some sort of "tank" within the mine, but it would be easier to construct such a tank in a more stable environment if you were going to go to all that trouble.


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    #7
    djpbarry
    Registered Users Posts: 13,104 ✭✭✭✭djpbarry


    easychair wrote: »
    It might be possible to construct some sort of "tank" within the mine....
    Which is exactly what this proposal entails.
    easychair wrote: »
    ...but it would be easier to construct such a tank in a more stable environment...
    Such as?


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    #8
    Oldtree
    Registered Users Posts: 8,104 ✭✭✭Oldtree


    Pumped hydro storage is what Organic Power is trying to do in Mayo, see here:

    http://www.pleanala.ie/casenum/PC0093.htm

    and also had in mind for, but were unsuccessful, in another part of Mayo discussed in this other thread:

    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055393679


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    #9
    BryanF
    Moderators, Home & Garden Moderators Posts: 10,140 Mod ✭✭✭✭BryanF


    easychair wrote: »
    One wonders how good an idea it will be when one tries to "fill" an abandoned mine
    sounds like a better idea than fracking?

    btw do you have any proposals on generating and storing renewable energy yourself?:rolleyes:


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    #10
    Oldtree
    Registered Users Posts: 8,104 ✭✭✭Oldtree


    BryanF, are you suggesting the lesser of two evils approach then?

    Renewable power generation and storage are a million miles away from being sustainable in this country and continue to be less financially viable as more oil, coal and gas deposits are both becoming viable to extract and new ones being discovered. Any in depth research shows them to be white elephants.

    Don't get me wrong though I would like to see an end to this type of pollution, but I just can't see it happening. Subsidy is always the death knell of any industry.


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    #11
    BryanF
    Moderators, Home & Garden Moderators Posts: 10,140 Mod ✭✭✭✭BryanF


    Oldtree wrote: »
    BryanF, are you suggesting the lesser of two evils approach then?
    I suppose I am, but that was not really where I was going with the conversation. I rarely see an proof from this poster, so i said i try a different tack and ask does easychair have a better option
    Oldtree wrote: »
    Renewable power generation and storage are a million miles away from being sustainable in this country and continue to be less financially viable as more oil, coal and gas deposits are both becoming viable to extract and new ones being discovered.
    i think you need to divide these two issues. fossil fuels are cheap because everyone is set up to use them, any change away from this is as much bout psyche as its is about perceived extra costs. I disagree that renewable's (I'm speak primarily about wind)are less financially viable than fossil fuels, imho its more about the barriers in their way..
    Any in depth research shows them to be white elephants.
    can you point me to some thanks
    Don't get me wrong though I would like to see an end to this type of pollution, but I just can't see it happening. Subsidy is always the death knell of any industry.
    you hit on an interesting issue here, if the CC bill was implemented maybe it would have sent a message to investors that our government were serious about reducing our national reliance on fossil fuels, and were open to the renewable business.. we have one inter-connector starting, there is no reason why we couldn't be exporting wind energy in the next few years if the ESB networks got their s**t together and a small portion of the bank bail outs were put towards something that's actual in our national interest..


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    #12
    easychair
    Closed Accounts Posts: 905 ✭✭✭easychair


    BryanF wrote: »
    sounds like a better idea than fracking?

    btw do you have any proposals on generating and storing renewable energy yourself?:rolleyes:

    Thankfully its not a competition between this scheme and fracking.

    This thread is about this particular proposal, which seems more obviously designed to give attention to a hitherto unknown facility, and if we have other proposals the place for them would be in other threads.


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    #13
    BryanF
    Moderators, Home & Garden Moderators Posts: 10,140 Mod ✭✭✭✭BryanF


    easychair wrote: »
    Thankfully its not a competition between this scheme and fracking.

    This thread is about this particular proposal, which seems more obviously designed to give attention to a hitherto unknown facility, and if we have other proposals the place for them would be in other threads.
    Perfect, lets take this back to how this should be discussed then.
    Easychair can you back-up your distast for unground pumped storage with any peer-reviewed scientific papers or journals. thanks


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    #14
    easychair
    Closed Accounts Posts: 905 ✭✭✭easychair


    BryanF wrote: »
    Perfect, lets take this back to how this should be discussed then.
    Easychair can you back-up your distast for unground pumped storage with any peer-reviewed scientific papers or journals. thanks

    I hesitate to say this, but I think it possible you misunderstand the role of peer-reviews of scientific papers, or even the role of scientific papers.

    I am not aware of any "scientific papers" which have made a study of what happens if you pour vast quantities of water into disused mines.

    More importantly, it doesn't take a scientific study to know that disused mines are unstable places and are designed to take water away from the mine, rather than store water.

    Your statement that I have a distaste for unground (sic) pumped storage is baseless and incorrect. What I have a distaste for is for schemes which have not been thought through in a common sense way, and for other posters who seem to want to invent what I have a distaste for.


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    #15
    djpbarry
    Registered Users Posts: 13,104 ✭✭✭✭djpbarry


    Oldtree wrote: »
    Renewable power generation and storage are a million miles away from being sustainable in this country and continue to be less financially viable as more oil, coal and gas deposits are both becoming viable to extract and new ones being discovered. Any in depth research shows them to be white elephants.
    Well, that’s just not true – onshore wind generation, for example, is one of the cheapest available means of electricity generation.
    easychair wrote: »
    I am not aware of any "scientific papers" which have made a study of what happens if you pour vast quantities of water into disused mines.
    Nor am I, but that’s not what you were asked.
    easychair wrote: »
    What I have a distaste for is for schemes which have not been thought through in a common sense way...
    Kindly point out the “common-sense” flaws in the above scheme.


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    #16
    pljudge321
    Registered Users Posts: 1,129 ✭✭✭pljudge321


    What I want to know is:

    Whats the usable volume of the average mine?

    How many mines suitable for such a scheme exist?


    Then I'll make a judgement call on whether or not its a viable idea.


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    #17
    easychair
    Closed Accounts Posts: 905 ✭✭✭easychair


    pljudge321 wrote: »
    What I want to know is:

    Whats the usable volume of the average mine?

    How many mines suitable for such a scheme exist?


    Then I'll make a judgement call on whether or not its a viable idea.

    The first thing to realise is that there is no such thing as a average mine. The second thing to realise is that disused mines are very unstable places. It's not clear why the authors of this particularly dotty scheme have chosen disused mines as the ideal place to propose for such a scheme. Has anyone any idea why they have decided such inhospitable and dangerous places have been chosen?


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    #18
    BryanF
    Moderators, Home & Garden Moderators Posts: 10,140 Mod ✭✭✭✭BryanF


    easychair wrote: »
    The first thing to realise is that there is no such thing as a average mine. The second thing to realise is that disused mines are very unstable places. It's not clear why the authors of this particularly dotty scheme have chosen disused mines as the ideal place to propose for such a scheme. Has anyone any idea why they have decided such inhospitable and dangerous places have been chosen?
    are they putting people down the mine with the water? who exactly cares if its inhospitable?


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    #19
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    BryanF wrote: »
    are they putting people down the mine with the water? who exactly cares if its inhospitable?
    As long as it holds water, who cares, but then again even that doesn't really matter if the second storage tank is above ground.

    As long as the mine can take the outflow of the turbines during power generation and hold it for a day or two before it gets pumped back up, then it will work.


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    #20
    slowburner
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,218 Mod ✭✭✭✭slowburner


    Pardon me for butting in here, but is this proposed scheme not just a variant of the technology used by Siemens at Turlough hill?

    Re. porosity of mine shafts - there are 850m deep levels here, full to the brim with water and they've been full since pumping stopped in 1982. The history of the mines in Avoca and many other places, shows that the problem is not keeping water in but keeping it out. When a level is driven in beneath the water table, water storage is not going to be a problem - quite the reverse in fact.


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    #21
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    It is, just using "spare" wind generated power to do the pumping.
    One of the biggest problems with renewable energy of course is generating power on demand instead of just generating when it's windy or sunny or whatever the tides are doing.


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    #22
    djpbarry
    Registered Users Posts: 13,104 ✭✭✭✭djpbarry


    easychair wrote: »
    The second thing to realise is that disused mines are very unstable places.
    Some mines are unstable, typically at the entrances.
    easychair wrote: »
    It's not clear why the authors of this particularly dotty scheme have chosen disused mines as the ideal place to propose for such a scheme.
    Because using a pre-existing, disused hole in the ground makes a whole lot more sense than excavating a new one?


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    #23
    slowburner
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,218 Mod ✭✭✭✭slowburner


    Using an existing shaft where the resource has been exhausted makes perfectly good sense.
    Much better than the previous best idea which has usually been landfill or storage of nasty stuff.
    There is one place I know where there is a very deep flooded shaft with an (almost) ready made reservoir above it. It's state owned and nobody is quite sure what to do with it - back filling it or making it a mine heritage site are the two options currently being considered.
    Wouldn't it be fantastic to see a project like this piloted there? The site has superb wind resources too. The project could even generate sufficient funding for development of the site for mining heritage.


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    #24
    L
    Registered Users Posts: 655 ✭✭✭L


    Meh. Storage looks great until you actually look at the specifics:

    They're extremely capital intensive to develop.

    They don't store energy perfectly (what you put in is always much more than what you get back out).

    Put together it means you're better off not using storage and instead building flexible conventional plant to compensate for any errors you have in your forecasting.


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    #25
    Red Neck Hughie
    Registered Users Posts: 88 ✭✭Red Neck Hughie


    I'm a big fan of anything renewable but given that the operators at Ardnacrusha have to be very careful with rates of drainage and fill of the canal (I assume avoiding resonance with the canal banks)- the effects of massive and periodic pressure changes might do a lot of harm underground.


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    #26
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    L wrote: »
    Meh. Storage looks great until you actually look at the specifics:

    They're extremely capital intensive to develop.

    They don't store energy perfectly (what you put in is always much more than what you get back out).

    Put together it means you're better off not using storage and instead building flexible conventional plant to compensate for any errors you have in your forecasting.
    The point of using developing & using renewable energy is the simple fact that eventually (could be as soon as 2014) there will be insufficient fossil fuel available at an affordable cost to maintain supplies of electricity at current levels let alone allow growth.

    These types of capital intensive projects need to be done soon or there will be insufficient capital available to finance such a project in the future when it will really be needed.

    A but like not saving enough seed for next years crop and starving the following year!


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    #27
    djpbarry
    Registered Users Posts: 13,104 ✭✭✭✭djpbarry


    L wrote: »
    They're extremely capital intensive to develop.
    I imagine that using an existing mine mitigates the cost to a significant degree.
    L wrote: »
    They don't store energy perfectly...
    No system is going to be perfect. But round-trip efficiency at Turlough Hill, for example, is about 75% - that’s pretty high.
    L wrote: »
    Put together it means you're better off not using storage...
    Well, that’s a shame, because energy storage is probably something we’re going to be needing a lot more of.


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    #28
    djpbarry
    Registered Users Posts: 13,104 ✭✭✭✭djpbarry


    Red Neck Hughie wrote: »
    I'm a big fan of anything renewable but given that the operators at Ardnacrusha have to be very careful with rates of drainage and fill of the canal...
    Bear in mind that Ardnacrusha was designed almost 90 years ago.
    Red Neck Hughie wrote: »
    ...the effects of massive and periodic pressure changes might do a lot of harm underground.
    I think that’s unlikely given that the reservoirs will be contained in tanks.


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    #29
    pljudge321
    Registered Users Posts: 1,129 ✭✭✭pljudge321


    djpbarry wrote: »
    I imagine that using an existing mine mitigates the cost to a significant degree.

    I'm not sure how feasible using a mine would be for such a system, you probably need very specific time of bedrock and geological conditions. I cant find any sort of surveys or very many papers on the area so that's just me guessing.
    djpbarry wrote: »
    No system is going to be perfect. But round-trip efficiency at Turlough Hill, for example, is about 75% - that’s pretty high.

    Turlough Hill is used for heavy ramping support and peak shaving i.e. times when you would otherwise have to ramp up some of the CCGT's or turn on the OCGT's. Doing this is highly inefficient and uses a lot more energy than just running providing baseload power. I wouldn't be surprised that the energy saved by Turlough Hill is actually greater than the energy that would have to be used otherwise.
    djpbarry wrote: »
    Well, that’s a shame, because energy storage is probably something we’re going to be needing a lot more of.

    Would be nice, where to actually put it is the issue.


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    #30
    L
    Registered Users Posts: 655 ✭✭✭L


    Deleted User wrote: »
    The point of using developing & using renewable energy is the simple fact that eventually (could be as soon as 2014) there will be insufficient fossil fuel available at an affordable cost to maintain supplies of electricity at current levels let alone allow growth.

    That's a straw man argument. You shouldn't conflate renewables with storage. They're not the same thing even remotely (using one doesn't mean the other one is necessary).
    Deleted User wrote: »
    These types of capital intensive projects need to be done soon or there will be insufficient capital available to finance such a project in the future when it will really be needed.

    That capital investment shouldn't be going into storage.

    Interconnection, possibly (that's a tricky one to give a good answer on tbh).

    Demand response capability, definitely (EVs are a good example here as is CAES).

    Pure storage, not really - it doesn't really solve the problems with renewable variability all that well and it costs a packet (I'll get to that later).
    Deleted User wrote: »
    A but like not saving enough seed for next years crop and starving the following year!

    It's less like forgetting to keep seed for next years crops and more like remembering to buy fertilizer rather than just pesticides when you don't have a pest problem. (Still a bad analogy, but hopefully you'll see what I mean).


    In a nutshell, the Electricity problem (well, this variability aspect of it anyhow) comes down to matching your generation to your demand. As it's Power generation (time dependent), you basically need to match up your generation with your demand as it happens.

    Now, storage helps with this because it allows you to pick up part of your generation and effectively move it to a different time (less time dependent basically as we can store it as energy) - matching the demand whenever it is needed. This comes at a substantial cost because conversion between energy and storage incurs losses.

    Alternatively, we can change our demand to better suit the available power generation either by reducing required power (priority systems) or by adding demand that isn't as time dependent when the renewable generation was underestimated by the forecast (Charging your electric car, running assorted compressors, home heating and so on). Doing it this way means we don't end up taking the massive losses that storage creates.

    Basically, there's a reason we have built pretty much no storage since the system was in its infancy - it's at its most useful when a system has a lack of generation capacity compared to the possible variability of demand. Not when the generation itself is the more variable part.


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    #31
    pljudge321
    Registered Users Posts: 1,129 ✭✭✭pljudge321


    L wrote: »
    Demand response capability, definitely (EVs are a good example here as is CAES).

    I can't really see demand side management with EV's taking off, who's going to pay for the batteries that get worn out after 2 years instead of 10 because they are constantly being cycled. Fridges, washing machines, heating etc seems more feasible.


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