EnviroLink Forum

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-2 ... _179284713

Central and Eastern European countries are moving to disconnect their power lines from Germany’s during the windiest days. That’s when they get flooded with energy, echoing struggles seen from China to Texas over accommodating the world’s 200,000 windmills.

Renewable energy around the world is causing problems because unlike oil it can’t be stored, so when generated it must be consumed or risk causing a grid collapse. At times, the glut can be so great that utilities pay consumers to take the power and get rid of it.

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With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

What is the matter with their wind generators, can't they be feathered in high winds???
In independent home systems they tip and furl, or feather in excess wind, and excess power is shunted to a resistive water heater load.

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"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”
― Chief Seattle

Finally banks/investors are understanding the idea of thermal storage for solar and installing thermal solar installations instead of PV so they can store the energy during the day for evening and night delivery. I have had the idea for years of having wind produce heat and then make steam-on-demand for electricity. It is not as efficient at the creation of electricity but by utilizing even the smallest wind and continuing to generate in the strongest of winds, those losses from inefficiency are gained back in extra energy gathered. I will have to make this system on a household basis and test it on Saskatchewan's extreme winds and cold winters. Solar and wind together with biomass burning could combine in a thermal system to produce grid-scale electricity on demand... tall wind towers produce minimal shadows on the trough-type solar collectors or the mirrors can be focused on the tower of a windmill for a thermal tower style. I will try a method to use friction to make high-temperature kiln temperatures (air-forced liquid iron in chromium pipes... air pressure from pneumatic pump powered by wind).

I think the real problem is the various countries are not willing to pay outside their country for energy and then lose a lot of that expensive energy in line losses as it travels across their country and gets sold again to the next country down the line.

using excess electricity for thermal storage is an idea but there must be a use for that heat or a way to turn it into electricity later... that is the lacking technology when on a grid-scale. My ideas might work but I have not seen them in action. Near where I live, a wind tower project has batteries inside the towers for the windmills so they can down-size the transmission wires by storing excess power in times of variable wind (common in the area of installation)

Actually I don't think it is the wind generators that are the problem in this case it just the German grid that is inadequate. If you change the power source location you are going to have to update the grid unless you generate the power on site and then you don't need a grid anyway.

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Pollution is not the solution

That is the problem, since production of renewable energy is not in the industrial region and thus must be transported. The headline used by Forbes (which I copied here) was a little misleading, but clearer in the article.

The bottleneck is one of many in the last eight years as $460 billion of wind farms were built worldwide on plains, hills and at sea before networks were fully expanded to deliver the power to consumers. Upgrading Germany’s system alone to address capacity and technical shortfalls will cost at least 32 billion euros ($42 billion), its four grid operators said in May.

Germany installed more than 8,885 megawatts of wind energy since 2007, mostly in the north. Now it’s studying how to build the power backbone to connect to the industrialized south, home to hundreds of factories such as those of chemicals manufacturer Wacker Chemie AG (WCH) and Siemens AG. (SIE) The electricity detours through the Czech Republic and Poland when German cables can’t handle the load as the countries’ grids are interconnected.

The problem may intensify with the approaching winter. With an insufficient north-south connection, Germany’s power network came close to a collapse last February when high winds in the Baltic sea flooded it with power and the Czech Republic and Poland threatened to disconnect their grids. The coming winter can be critical, German Economy Minister Philipp Roesler said last week.

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With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none”
Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Albert Einstein

Is there a way of freeing energy from the grid so this doesn't happen? Has any progress been made on batteries? http://www.ted.com/talks/justin_hall_ti ... _grid.html