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#Post#: 759--------------------------------------------------
Ocean Bottom Hydraulic Carpet (VERY energy dense)
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: February 7, 2014, 5:33 pm
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Another huge kick in the teeth to fossil fuels!
Ten square meters of ocean bottom produce as much energy as a
football field covered with solar panels!
Expect fossil fuelers to claim waves are "too intermittent" to
provide "reliable" energy.
HTML http://www.u.arizona.edu/~patricia/cute-collection/smileys/lying-smiley.gif
They will also willfully ignore the FACT that storm conditions
which cause home owners to use more energy will correlate
EXACTLY with increased wave energy. ;D
The propagandists ALWAYS REMEMBER WHAT TO LEAVE OUT!
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#Post#: 1887--------------------------------------------------
Underwater Compressed Air Energy Storage: Fantasy or Reality?
DIR By: AGelbert
Date: September 16, 2014, 8:20 pm
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Underwater Compressed Air Energy Storage: Fantasy or Reality?
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Bruce Dorminey, Correspondent
September 16, 2014
Underwater Compressed Air Energy Storage (UW-CAES) — a step
beyond underground energy storage in caverns — may soon offer
conventional utilities a means of long-duration load shifting
for their large-scale electrical grids, and niche microgrid
operators a means of reducing their fossil-fuel dependence, say
its advocates.
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Thin Red Line Aerospace Chief Engineer and CEO Maxim de Jong
inspects the Energy Bag during initial test inflation. Credit:
Keith Thomson, Thin Red Line Aerospace
More than 40 percent of the world's population lives within 150
kilometers of a coastline. Thus, the hope is that UW-CAES can
benefit both from existing and future wind and solar microgrids
as well as from coastal cities using conventional electrical
grids.
The basic concept involves some form of “energy bag,” a
balloon-like vessel made of stretched fabric, which is anchored
to a sea- or lakebed. When energy is needed its compressed air
can be released to drive turbines.
“For UW-CAES [at depths of 400 to 700 meters], the pressure
remains almost constant for all levels of fill,” said Seamus
Garvey, a professor of dynamics at the University of Nottingham
in the U.K. “In effect, this means that for a given upper
pressure, each cubic meter of air storage delivers about three
times as much energy storage.”
Maxim de Jong, CEO of Thin Red Line Aerospace near Vancouver,
Canada, says with such compressed air storage, it’s best to use
high-efficiency Rolls Royce-like turbines.
“If you pump air into a cavern, you have a fixed volume. So the
more air you let out of a limestone cave with compressed air,
the more the pressure is going to drop,” said De Jong. “But
with UW-CAES, the ocean [pressure] is always pushing on the
bag.”
Testing the Waters
Curtis VanWalleghem, CEO of Toronto-based Hydrostor, said their
venture focuses on electricity-to-electricity storage,
specifically in daily load-shifting of longer than three to four
hours. Hydrostor says its strategy will initially be to “partner
with utilities and energy producers to accelerate large-scale
deployment.” In Toronto, he said the benefit for Toronto
Hydropower comes in deferring transmission- and
distribution-line investment.
“There are four or five days a year when Toronto Hydropower
doesn’t have enough transmission capacity to bring power to the
city,” said VanWalleghem. “So, you either have to build a
couple of hundred kilometers of transmission lines to the
nearest gas plant, or you’ve got to find a peaking capacity to
put in a city.” This time period is when electrical demand is 20
percent higher than average.
In order to solve this problen, VanWalleghem said the Lake
Ontario UW-CAES project is “permitted” up to 2 MW, however, its
initial installation at a depth of 80 meters some 5 kilometers
from the Toronto shore will handle about 750 kW from Toronto
Hydropower.
Electricity stored underwater in this instance is generated from
the normal electric grid. Using their electricity, Toronto
Hydropower will use a compressor to store air in an underwater
holding tank after being fed through pipelines from the city.
To turn the compressed air back into electricity, Hydrostor will
use a turbo-expander linked back into the grid.
Unlike caverns, which are constricted by their size and
location, Hydrostor will use what VanWalleghem terms “air
accumulators.” “The other alternative is extremely expensive
steel pressure vessels,” said VanWalleghem. “But we’re almost
as low-cost as the caverns.”
The technology’s advantages include off-the-shelf compressors,
turbines, heat exchangers as well as “free” air and ocean
pressure. UW-CAES advocates even note that the tech is
environmentally friendly and the bags can act as “artificial
reefs” for marine life.
If a project is more than 3 kilometers offshore, however, then
the cost of piping and the energy loss running compressed air
through pipe becomes a real financial concern, according to de
Jong.
Hydrostor has also signed a power purchase agreement with WEB
Aruba N.V. for a UW-CAES facility based on the Canadian
venture’s proprietary technology. The project is to be
installed near Aruba’s Vader Piet Wind Park on the island’s
southeastern coast later this year.
“Aruba has a wind farm and solar plants, but they end up with
too much electricity at night,” :o said VanWalleghem. “So, the
idea is that they store it and the next day — instead of turning
on a diesel peaking plant — they use our stored energy to
provide six to eight hours of on-demand peaking power.”
That’s very different from batteries, which normally kick in
whenever a cloud comes over a solar field or gusts drop off over
a wind farm, said VanWalleghem.
Microgrid Niche
While microgrid developers have traditionally focused on using
battery energy storage, Peter Asmus, a principal research
analyst with Navigant Research, said UW-CAES could play a role.
And he notes that Hydrostor is uniquely positioned for larger
islands that mimic a larger grid’s need for bulk storage.
Yet the ideal niche market is arguably in replacing fossil fuel
microgrid generators. De Jong said these are normally found on
wealthier small island communities that can afford renewable
energy, such as the Maldives, Reunion and a few affluent islands
in the Caribbean and Pacific.
“We think our long-duration storage can displace diesel
generators in these niche markets,” said VanWalleghem. “[Here],
you’d be better to put in solar or wind and long duration
storage.”
VanWalleghem said that aside from Aruba, Hydrostor is also
talking to other islands about solar and storage for energy
plants in the 2- to 5-MW range.
Barriers to Development
Before these UW-CAES projects can be brought to fruition,
however, there are several economic challenges to iron out.
“You need a lot of volume to make it scalable; [preferably] a
40-meter diameter bag (or some 36,000 cubic meters of storage,”
said de Jong. “And if you’re going to get permission to plant
something like that on the ocean floor, then you need to show
that it’s going to maintain structural integrity for five to ten
years.”
There are also some technical issues to address, according to de
Jong. “It will be a challenge to find the right way to keep the
things on the ocean floor because the bag alone would weigh 500
metric tons and if something like this were to cut loose, you
could sink an oil tanker.” :emthup:
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In offshore configurations, the ideal target installation depth
would be 500 meters. Thus, when submerged, de Jong says the
ballast required to retain a commercial energy bag would require
the equivalent of 130,000 cubic meters of concrete (or some 3.6
times the volume of the energy bag itself).
As de Jong points out, regardless of depth, 1 cubic meter of air
in an underwater bag will have a buoyant force of 1 metric ton.
However, he says due to the potential for an accidental release
of such bags from the ocean floor, a minimum 10-metric ton
restraining structure would also be needed.
Despite these challenges, those in the industry remain
optimistic for successful growth. :icon_sunny:
“In the next five years, we will [likely] see between 5 and 20
prototype projects,” said Garvey. “But after 2020, we will see
a few large projects being fitted alongside offshore wind where
real commercial payback is expected and achieved.”
HTML http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/09/underwater-compressed-air-storage-fantasy-or-reality
Agelbert NOTE: I guess this is the Fossil Fueler cue to say...
"Renewable energy is not ready for prime time!".
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Keep repeating
moronic mantra, fossil fuelers. We know what you are about.
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