Spiritofireland.org - suggests energy independence in five years and much more

[MPB]

We made one over the top claim at the beginning, energy independence in five years.

It might take ten years to reach the level of output necessary to enable Ireland to have complete electrical independence, should it ever be necessary to cease exports and concentrate on the domestic market.

Because the international economic situation means that we must build the reservoirs one at a time rather than concurrently.

We have seen far too much capital destruction over the last two years to begin destroying the billions that have been invested in gas turbine plants.

Best of luck.

You and yours deserve nothing less.

[fiannafailure]

Best of luck.

You and yours deserve nothing less.

Thank you for your support

There are a lot of good people working on this project and believe me that Irish diaspora spread across the globe is a force to be reckoned with, they can almost guarantee a meeting at least with almost anyone, anywhere.

[riven]

Their underlying technology is not that dissimilar to Isentropic's in some ways, they store power by cyrogenically liquifying air in an efficient way, and reversing the process to get the energy back. The theoretical maximum efficiency is about 75%, they claim to be getting actual efficiencies of about 60%,

Efficiency is only a measure not an absolute value. 75% of a huge value means 25% losses that are huge. If this technology was as good as it claimed then pure hydrogen companies like UOP air products etc would be very interested. These companies do liquefy air so as to produce the pure gases in air and I can tell you there is nothing efficient about the process. Even hydrogen proponents do not claim such storage efficiencies.
For that matter hydrogen which can be generated by liquefying air is mainly produced from natural gas or off gas from refineries.

[joel]

We made one over the top claim at the beginning, energy independence in five years.

It might take ten years to reach the level of output necessary to enable Ireland to have complete electrical independence, should it ever be necessary to cease exports and concentrate on the domestic market.

Because the international economic situation means that we must build the reservoirs one at a time rather than concurrently.

We have seen far too much capital destruction over the last two years to begin destroying the billions that have been invested in gas turbine plants.

Curious - burn gas anyway because of the money already invested in the plants! The waste of resources is frightening.

[energy]

What are the others, genius?

They rolled out a plan whereby 7.5GW of installed wind combined with 200GWhr of pumped storage would provide energy independence. These "figures" were analysed by those with an interest in the area and found to be complete nonsense. It's quite simple to check - the wind data is available from Wind Generation | Eirgrid - Geckko providing graphs on this thread clearly showing that the numbers were wrong.

Here are some basic numbers for Ireland for June to date.

The chart below shows what the remaining capacity would be for a pumped storage facility of 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500GW hrs supported by 10GW of windfarm capacity.

These are based on the actual load factors achieved from 1 June to 15 June.



What do you see?

With 10GW in windfarm capacity, and even with 500 GW hrs of pumped storage (assumed to be 100% full at 1 June), we would have run out of electricity this month.

I didn't even have to do any cherry picking. Just this month to date.

Some much for some of the number being thrown around this forum. What muppets.

In fact SoI now admit that the scheme will rely on "importing" power from the UK (nuclear or fossil fuel plant) in order to prevent the reservoirs running dry.

Andy Wilson took a look at the numbers Spirit of Ireland more than a few wires short of a connection to work out the physical size of the reservoirs

Hence a lake of 1250km², or three times the area of Lough Neagh. The construction of an artificial lake of this size, at a raised elevation, would present some interesting challenges.

Eirgrid recently commissioned a report http://www.eirgrid.com/media/Low%20C...rket%20(2).pdf which analysed the SoI "solution" ...

Storage, by itself, is insufficient to manage intermittent renewable generation because of its power and energy capacity constraints but it can make a contribution towards managing intermittency as part of a portfolio with interconnection and flexible generation.

In relation to the actual SoI proposal (they have the data as SoI have asked Eirgrid to perform despatch modelling).

One such proposal is to develop sea water based pumped storage schemes in the U-shaped valleys on the west coast to create relatively large amounts of storage capacity and then be run to offset the intermittency of wind and marine generation. Plans include up to 2GW of generating capacity with up to 200GWh of storage, enough to run the plant at full load for 100 hours. This compared to the 1.8GWh (6 hours) available at Turlough Hill. Using the sea as
the lower reservoir could help lower costs – we have based our analysis on capital costs of €1,200/kW but in our experience each project has very individual cost characteristics.

We have illustrated the high renewables plus storage portfolio by showing the additional demand when the pumped storage is pumping as the dashed line above the basic level of system demand, and its output as a solid blue. To a significant extent the pumped storage is working to mitigate the intermittency of the wind, pumping when the wind output is high and generating when the wind output is low. However, the variations in the wind output are far greater than the capacity of the pumped storage, so interconnectors and gas-fired generation are called to meet demand at times of low wind output, as can be seen in the period between 15th and 22nd of the month when the pumped storage is mainly used to deal with the diurnal demand rising and falling. By the 27th the wind output has been low for long enough for the model to conserve the remaining water – although rising wind output on 28th and for the remainder of the month means that the pumped storage is able to pump continually.

The SoI fan club on this site went ballistic went Geckko posted his graphs last June - but the Eirgrid report gave the same results.

If you want more info on how the rest of the project doesn't add up then let me know ...

[fiannafailure]

Ah well now the above post deserves a robust response, check back this evening to read it

[MPB]

Thank you for your support

There are a lot of good people working on this project and believe me that Irish diaspora spread across the globe is a force to be reckoned with, they can almost guarantee a meeting at least with almost anyone, anywhere.

Except here, where the local chamber believe there is no point as they are not one of the chosen sites

[Finbar10]

Efficiency is only a measure not an absolute value. 75% of a huge value means 25% losses that are huge.

Efficiency isn't everything. And there would still likely be a place for inexpensive but inefficient storage technologies, even with SOI. An analogy would be the types of storage used in computers. There's very expensive but highly efficient and small cache memory near the CPU. Then there's cheaper, larger, but less fast ordinary memory. And finally there's huge, very cheap, but relatively slow hard disk storage. Computers try to ensure that the fastest and most efficient storage is used as much as possible but sometimes have to resort to inferior forms. The same is likely to hold for energy storage. It's unlikely SOI will have more than a few days of storage. People have discussed the possibility of a long lull in the wind blowing and the chances of this storage running down to zero. But the converse is also likely to sometimes happen. The SOI reservoirs are sometimes going to be completely full, with plenty of power for them to sell to the ESB. Where are local wind farms going to sell their excess capacity to then? Them having cheap but less efficient storage options would then make sense. No point in wasting excess capacity. Storing this at only 40/50% efficiency or even lower is better than not storing it at all. And if this extra storage is going to be used only occasionally, its relative cheapness is going to be more important than just raw efficiency.

If this technology was as good as it claimed then pure hydrogen companies like UOP air products etc would be very interested. These companies do liquefy air so as to produce the pure gases in air and I can tell you there is nothing efficient about the process. Even hydrogen proponents do not claim such storage efficiencies.
For that matter hydrogen which can be generated by liquefying air is mainly produced from natural gas or off gas from refineries.

OK, perhaps Highview Power's claims are exaggerated. I'm no expert. CAES technology based on compressing, if not liquefying, air can achieve practical electricity in-electricity back efficiencies of 50% or so. So levels of efficiency claimed don't seem extraordinary to me. Not sure of relevance of hydrogen. Almost no hydrogen in air, and it requires much lower temperatures than oxygen or nitrogen to liquefy. Hydrogen as a method of storing energy isn't particularly efficient anyway compared to some other technologies. The market for liquid oxygen and nitrogen can't be a particularly big one. I doubt if the price of the oil/energy required to liquefy these gases is going to be the only determiner of price. But I guess if Highview's claims are genuine there might be a practical use in that area. But separating out oxygen and nitrogen, rather than just liquefying both, with close boiling points would also need fractional distillation. Maybe this further complicates the process? Don't know. Have no great interest in defending Highview's technology. Sounds interesting and plausible, but guess would need a close examination by a physicist to determine if they're all they claim. Isentropic sounds more promising long term anyway.

[fiannafailure]

[quote=energy;2743309]

They rolled out a plan whereby 7.5GW of installed wind combined with 200GWhr of pumped storage would provide energy independence. These "figures" were analysed by those with an interest in the area and found to be complete nonsense. It's quite simple to check - the wind data is available from Wind Generation | Eirgrid - Geckko providing graphs on this thread clearly showing that the numbers were wrong.

Right from the very start, S of I recognised that wind alone would not be able to carry the load, but renewables in general could. We also recognised that a holistic approach to many energy related problems was needed, I have given many hints in this thread and elsewhere of our future plans, often mentioning techs such as wave pumps and anorphous amonnia, and on the latter The Associated Press: Minnesota plant will produce fertilizer from wind
These techs are on the cusp of commercial realisation and will play their part.

In fact SoI now admit that the scheme will rely on "importing" power from the UK (nuclear or fossil fuel plant) in order to prevent the reservoirs running dry.

And why not take advantage of commercial opportunities and use some of the profits to pump the research effort in renewables to the next level.

Andy Wilson took a look at the numbers Spirit of Ireland more than a few wires short of a connection to work out the physical size of the reservoirs

Here is a response to Andy's thesis

A few people, when first considering the Spirit of Ireland project, have referred in passing to an internet article published on the website of the Sustainability Institute.
Spirit of Ireland more than a few wires short of a connection
The Sustainability Institute is a small Irish enterprise, based in County Mayo and dedicated to the concept of encouraging and teaching people how live their lives in a manner which results in a much smaller personal environmental impact on the world in which we must all live.
A worthy goal and one in which we wish them well, however we must at the same time correct the misconceptions and comment on our own enterprise, which result from a novel and ideological view both of commerce and the standard of living to which the majority of people in the developed world aspire.

The author of the article would seem to have taken School Physics level calculations of the potential energy of water raised in the gravity field. These issues were discussed in much greater depth in numerous public presentations by the Spirit of Ireland e.g. (https://engineersireland.webex.com/e...Action=archive). It is a pity the author did not come to these forums to ask questions in person if he had any. The public debate on the Spirit of Ireland proposal has advanced a lot since then to more practical aspects, social and environmental implications but the author is still dealing with elementary potential energy calculations added to loose statements about wind intermittency. The article is full of numbers taken without substantiation and these numbers do not stand any scrutiny.
The first point to note is that the Spirit of Ireland project does not propose to close the existing power plants. Those are questions for the plant owners and the Department of Energy, and are questions that do not immediately require answers. The Spirit of Ireland project deals with supplying carbon free energy for export to the UK and also for FDI customers in Ireland. In the long term we would like to see that the fossil power plants decommissioned in Ireland are replaced with the natural energy plants we are pioneering and leading to this country becoming more energy independent and sourcing the bulk of its energy requirements from its own resources.
Here we cite several points made by the author and show the gross inconsistencies.
[COLOR="Red"]Author: “The proposal is predicated upon the erection of many of thousands of huge wind turbines...” [/COLOR]SoI- The first phase of the project is to install some 600 wind turbines 3 MW power each, not many thousands as claimed. In fact, the number is likely to be smaller than 600 as the power rating of industry-standard wind turbine increases every year, and in 4-5 years, the current standard 3 MW units will be obsolete and replaced for by machines of greater power rating.
[COLOR="Red"]Author: “A cursory examination of Eirgrid data shows...”[/COLOR]. SoI: it would be advantageous if the author would do more than cursory examination of the data before writing his article. SoI has analysed detailed hourly wind velocity data for four representative locations in Ireland collected by Met Eireann for the past several years. These were corrected using the Hellman exponent to calculate the wind velocity at the elevation of a typical wind turbine tower. These were superimposed on the technical specification for the modern wind turbines to calculate the power output of the turbines. This data shows that properly installed modern wind turbine’s in Ireland, at suitable locations should have a capacity factor at the level of 35% or more. This figure is consistent with data from recently commissioned wind farms placed at locations with favourable wind conditions, and is consistent with OFGEN data. The detailed analysis of the wind maps in Ireland, carried out by the Spirit of Ireland, suggest an abundance of sites in Ireland where such a level of capacity factors could be attained. The claim by the author that capacity factors “will fall in the future” is not substantiated.
[COLOR="Red"][COLOR="Red"]Author: “Taking into consideration wastage, conversion losses and lower capacity factors, Ireland would need approximately 16,000 MW of installed wind capacity to meet current electricity demand from wind and pumped storage alone ( other independent estimates put the necessary installed wind capacity even higher).[/COLOR][/COLOR] Spirit of Ireland: These numbers are erroneous. The electricity consumption is Ireland varies between 1500 MW in the middle of a summer night and 5000 MW in a winter evening. The average number of 3200 MW is representative. The figures dropped since 2008 due to the effects of our recession. The capacity factor of 0.35 indicates that what is required on average is 9140 MW, not 16000 MW as claimed if Spirit of Ireland did propose to substitute all the other existing power plants. Some 10% may need to be added to take into account the reprocessing losses by the pumped storage. This is based on round trip losses of 20% and the fact that on average, some half of the total wind power output needs to be reprocessed. It should be noticed that over 1000 MW has been installed at present and as much as 7000 MW of wind power is applied for through the Gate process.
[COLOR="Red"]Statement by the author “The total energy storage capacity of Turlough Hill is thus about 1.6 GWh (Gigawatt hour: one million kilowatt hours), or roughly one two-hundredth of one percent of Ireland's annual electricity demand”[/COLOR] shows a lack of understanding by the author of how the Turlough Hill facility is operated. It is certainly charged and discharged many times during the year, not once, sometimes twice a day. Comparison of the energy storage in a facility with the annual demand is meaningless.
[COLOR="Red"]The statement by the author “In order to balance out seasonal variations in wind energy, Ireland would need storage capacity of 2000-2500 GWh (2-2.5 TWh) to meet current national electricity demand solely from wind ...about one tenth of annual demand or equivalent to 1500 times the capacity of Turlough.” [/COLOR] is given without any substantiation and is entirely erroneous. The correct storage requirement can only be obtained from the hour-by hour model of wind velocity power and also hour-by-hour pattern of electricity consumption. The author has not presented any analysis to this point.
[COLOR="Red"]Statement by the author “As a consequence of seasonal variations in wind speed, approximately two thirds of the total annual electricity delivered to the grid from wind installations occurs during the October to March period. Wind electricity delivered in December and January is up to three times the delivery in June and July.”[/COLOR] directly contradicts the statement by the author [COLOR="Red"]“Electricity demand is often highest during winter anti-cyclones, in other words during periods of cold settled weather when wind speeds are typically very low.”[/COLOR] We do get more wind power in this country during the colder part of the year when the energy consumption is greater. The impression is that the author deliberately manipulates the sentiment as he admits[COLOR="Red"] “This winter, output from Ireland's wind farms was particularly low... The average for the period from the start of December to the end of February was about 9 percent.”[/COLOR] Clearly, the author does know that even during the winter that appeared to be less windy than usual we still get some 9% of electricity from the wind, broadly in line with the annualised average.
The author then moves on to describe a fishing lake that is [COLOR="Red"]“10 metre deep lake (or combination of lakes) of 32 km² in area, with a head of 100 metres”[/COLOR]. Spirit of Ireland is not planning to construct a fishing lake. Our reservoirs will have head of up to 200 m, water of up to 100 m and much smaller surface area of some 6 km2. We presented our calculations of the energy stored in such reservoirs, it is of the order of 100 GWh which is adequate to mitigate the wind intermittency. We refer the author to the presentation (https://engineersireland.webex.com/e...Action=archive) for details.

[COLOR="Red"][COLOR="Red"]Author: “The construction cost of 1250 km² of elevated inland lakes filled with seawater, having never been attempted anywhere in the world before, is hard to estimate.”[/COLOR][/COLOR] SoI: The massive lake of 1250km2 area that the author refers to, has nothing to do with Spirit of Ireland and is entirely the author’s fantasy. We proposed construction of initially one reservoir of just 6 km2 area. Altogether, three to four such reservoirs will be constructed giving the total area of the lakes of 18-24 km2.
[COLOR="Red"]Author: “Each 1 MW of installed wind capacity would cost €2 Million. Hence 15,000 MW of additional installed wind capacity would cost €30 Billion. If the money is borrowed, interest replayments might add another 50 percent to installation costs”.[/COLOR] SoI: This is the case of multiplying several arbitrary numbers to get an arbitrary result. Spirit of Ireland proposes to install initially 1800 MW of wind turbines. We aim to bring the installation cost to the European average or even below, which is €1.2 Million per MW. The rest of the budget is allocated for the construction of an energy storage facility, collection and the distribution network and the substations.

Eirgrid recently commissioned a report http://www.eirgrid.com/media/Low%20C...rket%20(2).pdf which analysed the SoI "solution" ...



In relation to the actual SoI proposal (they have the data as SoI have asked Eirgrid to perform despatch modelling).

Eirgrid were asked to dispatch model our natural energy power station as it would apply to the Irish grid

And as a professional engineering organisation, Eirgrid have produced figures which show that additional pumping capacity is required to turn a substantial mitigation of intermittancy into complete mitigation and so as a similarly professional engineering organisation, S of I have worked to find that additional capacity, and that additional capacity will be from other technologies paid for from arbitrage profits

The SoI fan club on this site went ballistic went Geckko posted his graphs last June - but the Eirgrid report gave the same results.

It is also worth again stating that most of Irelands earlier installed wind capacity is provided by older turbines in less than prime sites.

If you want more info on how the rest of the project doesn't add up then let me know ...

Please hold forth and share your inspiration please

[energy]

Right from the very start, S of I recognised that wind alone would not be able to carry the load, but renewables in general could.

I think your volunteer legal team should consider removing the following Spirit of Ireland - National Project for Energy Independence on your website especially when dealing with potential investors and inviting Joe Public to purchase "green bonds".

* Tens of thousands of jobs
* Achieve energy independence in five years
* Save €30 billion importing fossil fuels
* Create potential to add €50bn to our Economy
* Slash carbon dioxide emissions

There are laws against this type of activity ...
Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act, 2001, Section 6

[COLOR="Red"]Author: “The proposal is predicated upon the erection of many of thousands of huge wind turbines...” [/COLOR]SoI- The first phase of the project is to install some 600 wind turbines 3 MW power each, not many thousands as claimed. In fact, the number is likely to be smaller than 600 as the power rating of industry-standard wind turbine increases every year, and in 4-5 years, the current standard 3 MW units will be obsolete and replaced for by machines of greater power rating.

As for the thousands of turbines there must have been an outbreak of selective amnesia with the SoI team
Again from the website Spirit of Ireland - National Project for Energy Independence

Question: How many wind turbines we require fulfill our energy needs?
Answer: Wind turbines are manufactured in a wide range of sizes. Larger machines are more efficient.
The average output throughout a full year is much lower than the maximum “rated” or “installed” capacity.
verage output is site dependant and typically ranges from 25% to 35% of rated capacity.
For planning purposes it was assumed 2500 wind turbines each of 3 MW peak rating will produce an
average output of about 3000 MW.

[COLOR="Red"]Author: “A cursory examination of Eirgrid data shows...”[/COLOR]. SoI: it would be advantageous if the author would do more than cursory examination of the data before writing his article. SoI has analysed detailed hourly wind velocity data for four representative locations in Ireland collected by Met Eireann for the past several years. These were corrected using the Hellman exponent to calculate the wind velocity at the elevation of a typical wind turbine tower. These were superimposed on the technical specification for the modern wind turbines to calculate the power output of the turbines. This data shows that properly installed modern wind turbine’s in Ireland, at suitable locations should have a capacity factor at the level of 35% or more. This figure is consistent with data from recently commissioned wind farms placed at locations with favourable wind conditions, and is consistent with OFGEN data. The detailed analysis of the wind maps in Ireland, carried out by the Spirit of Ireland, suggest an abundance of sites in Ireland where such a level of capacity factors could be attained. The claim by the author that capacity factors “will fall in the future” is not substantiated.

What a load of waffle about load factor
1. In reality what is that largest wind farm that can be installed at these locations ? 100MW? The largest wind farm currently on line is 60.35MW at Derrybrien seehttp://www.eirgrid.com/mediaConnecte...%20%282%29.pdf

2. If these prime sites are located in West Clare and West Cork it's going to be pretty expensive to run a 110kV line from numerous little wind farms all the way to your reservoir in Donegal !

3. What data do OFGEM (The UK Energy Regulator) have about load factors for potential wind farms in Ireland ? Another SoI red-herring.

Eirgrid were asked to dispatch model our natural energy power station as it would apply to the Irish grid

And as a professional engineering organisation, Eirgrid have produced figures which show that additional pumping capacity is required to turn a substantial mitigation of intermittancy into complete mitigation and so as a similarly professional engineering organisation, S of I have worked to find that additional capacity, and that additional capacity will be from other technologies paid for from arbitrage profits

So the Eirgrid Report is correct in stating

Storage, by itself, is insufficient to manage intermittent renewable generation because of its power and energy capacity constraints but it can make a contribution towards managing intermittency as part of a portfolio with interconnection and flexible generation.