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

[sparkey321]

How much is the fuel bill every year? 7 billion? - can't see payback would be longer than a couple of years.

7 billion ? re you mad.

Energy costs for 2007 were 1.6 billion (source ESB annual report)

The wind pumped storage plan will not eliminate all, even by their figures they are talking of generating about 50% of peak demand. say they half this requirement (which is optimistic) that's a saving on 800 million. Payback using their figures (which are a wish not a reality) ignoring cost of borrowing would be 12.5 years. (with current borrowing cost closer to 20)

Add to this the higher maintenance costs on wind turbines. the write off on existing power stations etc.

[sparkey321]

You're talking through your hat. Pumped storage is at least 75% efficient. Its probably as efficient as a battery!

How many times do you have to be shown the figures ? Transmission losses, pump
efficiency, turbine efficiency and transformation losses.

75% is a wish.

[joel]

How many times do you have to be shown the figures ? Transmission losses, pump
efficiency, turbine efficiency and transformation losses.

75% is a wish.

Its crap - an ordinary power station has all the losses - except the pump!

[sparkey321]

Its crap - an ordinary power station has all the losses - except the pump!

The power is generated by the turbines, transformed up to the grid. (Point A into the battery)

Transformed down to the pumps. (losses say)
Pumps pump water into reservoirs (losses through pumps and friction on pipes)
Stored (losses through evaporation leakage etc say)
Powers turbines (losses of efficiency and losses in friction etc )
Transformed back up and onto the grid. (the "same" power had been transformed up twice now so it an additional loss ) now back at point A (out of the battery)

Its not a power station in the classical sense its a storage facility and all these losses are incurred in the physical storage of the power (taking power from point A back to point A or to use your metaphor power put into the battery to power out of the battery) so yes they are additional losses and much more than 75%

[joel]

The power is generated by the turbines, transformed up to the grid. (Point A into the battery)

Transformed down to the pumps. (losses say)
Pumps pump water into reservoirs (losses through pumps and friction on pipes)
Stored (losses through evaporation leakage etc say)
Powers turbines (losses of efficiency and losses in friction etc )
Transformed back up and onto the grid. (the "same" power had been transformed up twice now so it an additional loss ) now back at point A (out of the battery)

Its not a power station in the classical sense its a storage facility and all these losses are incurred in the physical storage of the power (taking power from point A back to point A or to use your metaphor power put into the battery to power out of the battery) so yes they are additional losses and much more than 75%

Christ, the way you are putting it, they'll have to put power in, instead of taking it out!

The current plant seems to be pretty efficient - so, it wouldn't be any worse than that. Why would it be any worse than that?

[Vega1447]

Christ, the way you are putting it, they'll have to put power in, instead of taking it out!

The current plant seems to be pretty efficient - so, it wouldn't be any worse than that. Why would it be any worse than that?

No reason why a pump storage plant should be less efficient (as a psp) than turlough Hill - prob a bit better as newer tech.

But TH is just a psp, a battery using the potential energy of the water to store energy.

Its purpose is to smooth out peaks in the power demand curve.

The Spirit of Steorn plan is based on Wind Power generation which has been exhaustively analysed on this thread.

[Geckko]

Cognative dissonance is so strong when debate turns to "alternative" energy.

What we know:

• Wind generation is about 20% efficient (i.e. a 1000MW windfarm can only be realied on to provide an average of 250MW of electricity)
• Wind generation is uncertain ansd unpredictable (you have no idea when that 250MW is going to come through)
• Practice shows (from Denmark and Spain especially) that no baseload capacity can be reduced as it might be needed (the coal, nuclear or whatever have to keep humming).
• The overall cost, which comes in higher electricity prices and/or large subsides riased via taxes amounts to extremely large amounts (see my elarlier link to research on SPain's experience)

Yet even when confronted by this reality people still cling to some blind faith that this is somehow a "good idea".

[sparkey321]

Christ, the way you are putting it, they'll have to put power in, instead of taking it out!

The current plant seems to be pretty efficient - so, it wouldn't be any worse than that. Why would it be any worse than that?

Exactly

Its a "power storage" or "battery" of you prefer. They have to put power in and then take it out. there are losses in between and they are much more than 25%.

The current pumped Hydro plant is a totally different situation in totally different circumstances.

Standard generating stations generate power all the time, it does not matter if its needed or not. You cannot just switch them on and off. You can do some planning around peak demand and bring some smaller power stations on line but they have to be heated up at all times generating CO2 and burning fuel. (turbine gas plants are the exception)

Turlough Hill works on the premise that why waste this power. When its been generated anyway and not be used lets just pump water up into a reservoir and then at peak times use it to give the grid a boost. Its only temporary providing a boost for a couple of hours around peak demand. its not designed as a back up for the grid and efficiency does not matter as there is huge amounts of available power to draw from.

What is being proposed is totally different. Pumped Hydro is be proposed as a a backup for the entire national grid.

Using totally random figures here but lets look at the following scenario.

la La land has a 10 MW average demand with a peak demand of 15MW. It decides that it will provide this 10MW demand using a combination of wind and pumped hydro.

So it builds reservoirs to provide 48 hours of backup and 10MW of wind capacity using 100 wind turbines

All goes to plan the reservoir is full and everything is in place. The wind turbines are generating 10MW quite happily until the wind fails in an area for say 6 hours and 3 turbines or 3MW is lost. Start up the pumped Hydro plant to meet the demand and then the wind pick up again.

All worked well.

Now 3MW for 6 hours means 18MW hours of capacity have been removed from the "battery".

To refill this will require require 18 wind turbines running for 6 hours. Except there are losses of say 50%. So now it will take 18 turbines 12 hours or 36 6 hours to replace the lost capacity. But that's OK because by night the demand drops by 40% to 6 MW for 8 hours. So that night the extra 4 MW can be sued for 8 hours to refill the "battery".

But hang on 4 MW X 8 hours is 32MW hours or a shortage of 4 MW.

Now that's assuming that for 18 hours out of 24 the turbines were running at 100% capacity and 100% efficency which will never happen. You need to build in extra generation capacity to allow for the fact that at no time will you have 100% capacity from your wind turbines. Then you have to build in extra capacity to refill the battery when needed. The lower your efficiency the more extra capacity is required.

With 50% efficiency if you plan on replenishing the battery at the same speed at which you drained it then you need to have extra wind power capacity of twice the generation capacity of that particular pumped hydro plant.

Its unlikely you will be using all your hydro plants at the same time but lets say 30% of your daily power comes from pumped Hydro then you would need to build wind generation capacity to meet your proposed supply level. Plus an allowance for certain levels if wind fluctuation plus and additional 60% to cover the requirement to re fill your battery.

So on LA LA land that would be 10MW plus which at 20% efficency woudl require 50MW generation capacity to allow for fluctuations in wind and 30MW to refill the battery.

So for a 10MW supply you would need to build 80MW of wind generation capacity. Drop your efficiency and that figure gets worse.

You can also decrease that figure by taking longer to refill the battery (say for each 4 hours drawn out take 8 to put it back) but that would require you to build even more storage capacity.

The capital costs would increase exponentially which ever why you go.

Also remember as shown earlier using current technology the land mass required just to build the wind farms to meet their supply figures not taking into account extra capacity to put into storage would be the size of County Limerick.

Imagine the environmental impact of that ? Imagine the cost of buying that land ? Imagine the cost of the turbines ? the infrastructure behind them ?

10 Billion would not even get you close.

[myksav]

Now the ignorance is being demonstrated by you.

how much do you know about power ? Electricity generation ? Distribution, batteries ?

Stored energy is the dream and something we are all looking forward to but this method is flawed, flawed for many reasons and others have outlined.

Earlier I did calculation (adjusted later by someone else) based on 12 hours of storage. In actual fast the storage requirements would be much much higher then 12 hours. The plan is to build all the wind turbines in clusters. this has advantages regarding cost and connecting them to the national grid but it means that if the wind fails in these areas then large percentages of the power output fails. Wind can and does fail (ie. available wind is outside the range necessary for power generation either to fast or too slow) for long periods of time far longer than 12 hours. You also need to factor in the additional requirements at peak times which will drain the water storage and the extra capacity required to fill these reservoirs in the first place.

The idea will work well on a micro generation basis but as the main source of power for the country !!! No...

They may have something they are not showing us but based on what we have seen its a pipe dream.

On a side note the UPS's you describe are battery backups, they provide minimal storage, are expensive, an environmental nightmare (batteries are far from green) inefficient and bulky.

Underlined.
I guess you do not understand the concept of examples.

how much do you know about power ? Electricity generation ? Distribution, batteries ?

Quite a lot, why? I will state that I have absolutely no recognised qualifications or Degrees in power systems but that never stopped me studying it in detail and understanding the precepts behind this SOI idea.
Are you an electrician, perhaps?

You look to be assuming that all turbines would be in one place, if you look at the proposal with unblinkered eyes you would note that all turbines about the country would be involved in supplying pumping power when there is the least demand on the grid.

As to your calculations of final percentage, I find them suspect. They are also moot as the originator 'fuel' source is free. The capital costs are moot as well, as any power system will require capital costs. The primary advantage with Pumped Storage is that once the system is built, the fueling doesn't cost. Maintenance applies to all power systems. With fossil fueled stations, they have to shut down at least in part to do maintenance. That entire station supply has to be made up by other stations. This applies less to a 'scattered' source, one or two turbines being shut down for maintenance won't make any difference.
Shutting down the resevoir power take-off isn't a problem as it can be done while the wind is blowing with no loss of power to the grid.

Do you have a solution to the future power requirements of the country that is proof against fuel source cut-off, seeing as we are 90% dependant on outside fuel sources to power our grid?
Nuclear? Not economically viable for Ireland using present technologies.
Depend on interconnectors? What happens when the everyone is effected by fuel shortages? France's nukes will not supply enough power to serve all of the EU.
Stick with fossil fuels? Too vulnerable to global events. Any we have of our own are too limited to power the country.


I stand on the content and meaning of my post, the detraction of this idea is pure oirish-ism. I see that in many ventures similar in scope as the SOI idea and, maybe it's the yankee side of me, but I find it to be one of the more stupid parts of Irish society/mentality. It's an inbuilt inferiority complex.

[joel]

Cognative dissonance is so strong when debate turns to "alternative" energy.

What we know:

• Wind generation is about 20% efficient (i.e. a 1000MW windfarm can only be realied on to provide an average of 250MW of electricity)
• Wind generation is uncertain ansd unpredictable (you have no idea when that 250MW is going to come through)
• Practice shows (from Denmark and Spain especially) that no baseload capacity can be reduced as it might be needed (the coal, nuclear or whatever have to keep humming).
• The overall cost, which comes in higher electricity prices and/or large subsides riased via taxes amounts to extremely large amounts (see my elarlier link to research on SPain's experience)

Yet even when confronted by this reality people still cling to some blind faith that this is somehow a "good idea".

I'd say you are an oil company plant. Or right wing nut.

They are all over the internet - Global Warming deniers and those who are anti-windpower. And you can't be argued with. Everytime the facts will ignored and sensational claims made.