An intelligent grid using all the cars plugged in could be a significant storage facility one day.
When the wind doesn't blow...
- Thread starter Jim Audiomisc
- Start date
An intelligent grid using all the cars plugged in could be a significant storage facility one day.
Seeker_UK
Feelin' nearly faded as my jeans
I don't know how that would work. I'd want to be assured my car has a full charge before I head off and that won't happen if there's a chance that half my kWh had been pinched just because it's a dull, windless day in Europe.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
I think when you plug it in, you can set a 'fully charged by' time, so the system can give and take the energy to/from the grid, provided the battery is fully juiced by the allotted time.
Seeker_UK
Feelin' nearly faded as my jeans
Brilliant, I have to tell National Grid what my planned movements are. Next thing will be them telling me when I can use my car. "Je suis désolé Mr Seeker. I know you want to get to the Chipping Sodbury office and earn money but you'll have to leave your car plugged in until Henri in Nantes has had chance to make his coffee and warm his croque monsieur..."
ETA
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
Brilliant, I have to tell National Grid what my planned movements are. Next thing will be them telling me when I can use my car. "Je suis désolé Mr Seeker. I know you want to get to the Chipping Sodbury office and earn money but you'll have to leave your car plugged in until Henri in Nantes has had chance to make his coffee and warm his croque monsieur..."
ETA
I think in actual fact you tell the car, which tells the charger. Probably via an app. Innit.
I think in actual fact you tell the car, which tells the charger. Probably via an app. Innit.
And of course there would be some form of payment and choice.
I think we're approaching 350k electric care already, the potential for future battery storage is massive.
Quite neat if your car can be earning all the time it's plugged in.
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
1) The amount of energy extracted at present, even by the biggest closest packed 'farms' is a trivial fraction of the overall wind power.
2) The power extracted essentially all ends up as going up as heat again after it goes though the system and your home/factory. Thus it goes back into heating the environment like wind drag does. And produces wind later on.
So if we build extensive wind farms the result isn't that the wind all stops. The Sun keeps driving the process and the energy leaves again in due course just as it would if we don't nothing at all.
BUT it means we can stop releasing CO2 which *does* bugger up (scientific term for it) the thermal/energy behaviour.
a.palfreyman
pfm Member
Instead of ringing in and saying 'can't get to work today, flat tyre'....
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
...erm. Momentum is conserved.
OK, there is a tiny loss as a 'doppler' effect for the incoming and outgoing radiation over the Earth's surface. But I suspect this is tiny compared with tidal forces and the effect of the Moon on Earth's rotation rate.
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
Was there no wind at all over the entire area shown in the map I put up? i.e. across the vast area of sea we can use to place windmills. And was this true at all elevations? Or did the jet stream also cease? 8-]
I suspect the tides continued, though.
The point I was making at the start of this thread was that - just as with oil/gas resources - we aren't limited to land area. Indeed, the sea is a much better place to find wind than land. And TBH I suspect that a few decades from now offshore wind platforms will also harvest 'tidal' flows and wave power as well as high-altitude winds. No real engineering reason this is impossible. If we bankroll it like we've done fossil, it should be possible. I'm old enough to recall people saying it was impossible to build successful platforms to extract oil and gas out in the North Sea because it was beyond what we could engineer to cope with. Yet it became routine.
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
Another factor I expect to become the norm is in-home battery stacks as well as in-vehicle ones connected to the mains when not in use. There are already people using these to 'buy' during periods when demand is low - to get a lower price - then use it rather that direct-from-mains when the grid price is high.
Batteries and PV are also developing rapidly.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
Naah, it's just that when there's excess power overnight, they run them backwards so they blow us back up to speed, innit.
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
Injuneers turn that round: Storage is the *solution*. And thus something interesting and potentially lucrative to work on. 8-]
BTW IIUC modern wind turbs can already be 'feathered'. Given that you'd want to alter the angle-of-attack to give efficient use for different wind-speeds I'd assume this would be the norm. So no need for excess generation to be a problem, except in terms of short term price... which again is where storage comes in.
The point of being an injuneer isn't to stop with "X is a problem". It is to go on with "but Y should be a solution". 8-] If not, what's the point of being an injuneer. No fun in giving up. Nor money.
I recall once saying to the head of a workshop "Don't tell me it can't be done. Tell me how you will do it!" Said this when he told me something was 'impossible' that *someone else had already built for me, elsewhere*.
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
IIUC existing systems work that way. You get paid for allowing a set amount of your car/house store to be used for the electric company, and they in return also ensure your car / home has a specified amount in store for you at given times, etc. How much 'extra' storage you then want to buy and install in your home determins how much you will be paid for the company share.
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
And also if you can use your car to power things in your home when the wall price of mains power is high during daytime periods when you're at home and don't need the car soon.
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
Ali T
pfm Member
Injuneers turn that round: Storage is the *solution*. And thus something interesting and potentially lucrative to work on. 8-]
BTW IIUC modern wind turbs can already be 'feathered'. Given that you'd want to alter the angle-of-attack to give efficient use for different wind-speeds I'd assume this would be the norm. So no need for excess generation to be a problem, except in terms of short term price... which again is where storage comes in.
The point of being an injuneer isn't to stop with "X is a problem". It is to go on with "but Y should be a solution". 8-] If not, what's the point of being an injuneer. No fun in giving up. Nor money.
I recall once saying to the head of a workshop "Don't tell me it can't be done. Tell me how you will do it!" Said this when he told me something was 'impossible' that *someone else had already built for me, elsewhere*.
Yes feathering is the norm to keep RPM’s as constant as possible, and of course to shut down rotation in higher winds, usually around 55mph is the max.
cctaylor
pfm Member
I don't have access to the records answer the question.
As I see it the implication is that the installed capacity needs to exceed demand by a considerable amount to ensure a continuous supply. The generating capacity needs also to be distributed as widely as possible to maintain supply.
Jim Audiomisc
pfm Member
Yes, it benefits fro a wide distribuition of the wind generators. This is one reason why having a potentially available area almost 10x the size of Scotland is a significant factor. We're talking about well over half a million square km. Some of it so windy that the *excess* of wind is more of a challenge than the lack!
The "considerable amount" means "when other sources like tidal, etc are included" and "allowing for the amount of storage in the system to keep power from 'excess' periods for 'lack' periods. Given a future context when every car and house will have its own storage...
Point is that when I was growing up in the East End of London in the 1950s the idea of 'central heating' was almost a fantasy. Only some rich people somewhere had that! We had one coal fire we could afford in one room, and a gas fire we could occasionally use in a bedroom when someone was ill in the winter. But just a few decades later and most people took round-the-home central heating for granted.
Much the same can and will happen in terms of local storage and the sources of power. Just a case of looking to injuneers and investing in that rather than being in thrall to big fossil. Look forwards, not backwards, if you want to see where you're going!
Richard Lines
pfm Member
I take the view that nothing is impossible - it just might not be possible now with our level of understanding. I'm sure that at a time when one Christopher Columbus was setting off to find the "New World' the suggestion that we should look to walking on the Moon would have been described as "Impossible"....................
We really do need to focus on capturing every last kW we can generate out of windy turbines. If you get up close to them when they are operating in windy conditions you can "hear" the blades as they alter their pitch.
We can't build enough Tesla type battery banks to capture sufficient worthwhile amounts of energy so we do need to do something with it. Building the likes of efficient hydrogen manufacturing plants is one idea that keeps getting kicked around. How that hydrogen is utilised I'm not sure. Storage would be an issue. I'm fascinated to see what cleverer people than me will hatch.
Regards
Richard