NRG says planned nuclear reactors are in doubt...

[RobinFinderson]

I'm pretty sure that flywheels respect all of the laws of thermodynamics.

[Pheidippides]

For the part in bold, I'm not sure how you can know this.

We don't build wind farms where the wind doesn't blow. They are built in places where a LACK of wind is unusual. Also, if we can build turbines that are tall enough, they can catch wind up where it is always blowing.

Flywheels don't only smooth out short-term spikes and troughs. Modern flywheels are efficient energy storage devices that, if deployed on a grand scale, could meet peak needs even when the wind isn't blowing (note: the wind is always blowing if you get up high enough in the atmosphere).

Tall turbines, or tethered kite turbines + the massive deployment of flywheel storage bases... wind has long been understood to be the most viable of the renewables for a reason.

You do realize that tethered kite turbines are a huge joke in the industry, especially with those that are super pro wind, right?

[RobinFinderson]

You do realize that tethered kite turbines are a huge joke in the industry, especially with those that are super pro wind, right?

I don't realize that. Why are they a joke?

[RobinFinderson]

No, you haven't. See Jeff L below.

What you are asking for is the holy grail of electricity. Whoever finally gets it will be wealthy beyond imagination and there are many people working on it.

I havent even brought up wind data, coverage area, historical wind trends, financing issues, and a score of other things. You don't know what you are talking about, and you can choose to believe that from people in the industry or you can continue to think you've solved one of the great problems of my lifetime.

Ok. So tethered turbines are a joke. Why?

Flywheels, which DO store energy, could not be implemented widely. Why?

[Moliere]

Does that incorporate startup costs? If not, it is radically different than the figures I saw.

The figures are 2005 estimated leveled cost of electricity and I pulled them from a recent MIT study on the future of natural gas. It's an interesting read (for me) and I'll link it and share more thoughts later.

FYI - leveled costs assume the plant fully recovers operating, fuel, capital and financial costs (which I assume means start up costs as well)

[NorthwestUteFan]

The figures are 2005 estimated leveled cost of electricity and I pulled them from a recent MIT study on the future of natural gas. It's an interesting read (for me) and I'll link it and share more thoughts later.

FYI - leveled costs assume the plant fully recovers operating, fuel, capital and financial costs (which I assume means start up costs as well)

FWIW, natural gas turbines are probably the most efficient method of power generation. Some of the newer GE turbines can approach/exceed 90% efficiency, speaking in terms of power out/power in. The only emissions are CO2 and H2O, and nothing else.

Gas and coal boiler plants push very hard to approach ~30% efficiency, and nuclear is roughly in the same ballpark (although nuclear almost completely minimizes exhaust emissions). Emissions include CO2 and H2O, but also CO, several sulfur compounds, ash, etc. Some of these are nastier than others of course.

Coal plants are SUPER cheap to build. China is building hundreds of them. Gas boilers are similarly cheap. Gas turbines cost more, but their inherent efficiency and relative speed with thich plants can be built makes them very attractive. Pacificorp has IIRC 3 turbines plus a boiler at the plant by the Fairgrounds in SLC. This location is convenient because they have easy access to Questar's BIG HP transmission lines.

Nuclear plants are SUPER cheap to operate and maintain, and pay extremely well, but are highly expensive to build. The plants in the US are typically designed from the ground up, as opposed to the iterative approach taken by France and other countries. France licenses a new plant and requires the new plant include all the best technologies available at the time of licensure. In the US we license the plant, then require it to incorporate new controls and technoligies along the way. Tremendously expensive way to run a chocolate factory.

I have a buddy who is a nuc plant operator in North Carolina, and he started at $128/hr during training. When he gained his license he jumped to $162/hr, and will only go up from there. He was a nuc in the Navy, so he already had a lot of experience plus the GI bill paid for his BS and MS in engineering. I have to say it sounds very appealing. Lots of stress, though.

[NorthwestUteFan]

Ok. So tethered turbines are a joke. Why?

Flywheels, which DO store energy, could not be implemented widely. Why?

I am not particularly familiar with tethered kite technology, although I understand the concept. Launch a kite into the jetstream, have the high speed rush of the wind spin a turbine connected to an A/C or D/C generator, and transmit the power back to the ground.

A few thoughts. To make it worth effort each kite would need to develop, let's say, 1 MW each (the big wind turbines can generate 2.5MW). To be effective you would want the kite somewhere above 40,000 ft, right in the sweet spot for the jetstream. A tether long enough to put a kite that high would be a minimum of 56,000 feet long (assuming 45* angle with no slack - likely it would exceed 80,000 ft). The jetstream band is about 10,000 feet thick, so the kite would need to adjust position to remain within the area of greater strength.

The power lines required to transmit 1 MW of energy become an issue. Assuming you can generate power at 690 V, you would require 3 power lines of 500kcmil size weighing about 6.5 lb/ft (IIRC?). So 3*6.5*80,000 = 1,560,000 lbs or 780 tons. Now add in the weight of the kite, turbine, etc. It would be feasible to have 3,000 tons flying around at 40,000 ft altitude without anything to guarantee it will remain aloft if it fell from the "power zone". Those big railroad coal cars each carry ~120 tons of coal, so this thing could be the equivalent

Even if the design could be proven, the public would never buy it. How much potential damage would occur if it failed and fell? How would you predict where it would fall, if it is designed to follow a dynamically changing jetstream? It could fall anywhere within 15 miles of the base station.

Now if you are talking about using the MOTION of a tethered kite to generate power within a ground station, that is a different story. It may be possible to generate some power from the pull generated by a kite. By putting it on a rocker/piston mechanism similar to a locomotive wheel driver it could even be fairly efficient. The expected power output would be a significant problem, as it would need to be MAMMOTH to approach the energy output of a small wind turbine. And you would need hundreds/thousands to match the output of a typical coal or natural gas plant.

For both types, lightning is a big problem. As is the closing off of large swaths of airspace.


Now for the flywheel. Efficiency = (Energy Out)/(Energy In - Losses). The biggest loss would be friction, or course. Other losses would be caused by energy required to sustain the steady-state, and controls to counter the effects of gyroscopic precession (which would be a big problem with a huge flywheel), energy conversion from the power generated by the turbine blades to the energy requried to spin the flywheel (unless it is installed inside the wind turbine itself).

The flywheel in a vacuum with magnetic bearings is a fairly effective in maintaining kinetic energy. Frictional losses would be minimal.

However power requirements to maintain the vacuum would be enormous. The act of spinning the flywheel up to speed would take a large amount of energy. Begin to draw power from the flywheel and it would slow down and become a less and less efficient of a power storage method. Time would be the enemy.

In my opinion Flywheels would serve better as a capacitance, levelling the peaks and valleys of the power output of the wind turbine. The only way they could provide sufficient peak power for more than a short amount of time (a few minutes) when the turbines are not producing sufficient power would be for the flywheel to contain a significant amount of kinetic energy. To generate 2.5 MW for hours at a time would require a flywheel with a very large mass spinning very fast.

One last thing: if the flywheel is located in the hub of the wind turbine, how much damage would it do if it somehow escapes? A large mass spinning at a high rotational velocity and falling from a few hundred feet would become the Tasmanian Devil when it hit the ground, destroying much before all the energy is dissipated.

Howzat?

[Pheidippides]

The figures are 2005 estimated leveled cost of electricity and I pulled them from a recent MIT study on the future of natural gas. It's an interesting read (for me) and I'll link it and share more thoughts later.

FYI - leveled costs assume the plant fully recovers operating, fuel, capital and financial costs (which I assume means start up costs as well)

Makes sense. Nuclear has huge start up costs but once you actually get there it's a very low marginal cost to keep going.

[Coach McGuirk]

This has all been very interesting and way over my head. Thanks to all involved for bringing this discussion about.

[Moliere]

Here are some even more startling numbers:

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your livelihood is somehow wrapped up in nuclear energy.

I wish we were more French

Me too!

Here's an idea: Let's get rid of everybody's tax credits, subsidies, reduced royalties etc. and see what happens. I suspect coal, oil and nat gas would still come out at or near the top (with nuclear) as far as lower cost energy.

How else are you going to hide the tax incentives being given out? I bet most people that say "the gas companies get government subsidies" couldn't name two or maybe even one form of subsidy they receive and how much it is. Most people that say that stuff are political hacks spewing rhetoric they hear from Beck or Maddow.

That wind power requires extensive subsidies, as witnessed during the 2008 campaign. T. Boone Pickens and GE ran a massive campaign supporting wind power. Pickens wanted the government subsidies to back and/or bail out his own personal $1B investment in wind energy, and of course GE was building the beasts.

I addressed the problems with wind power above. It is a feasible on a large scale only if: 1) it has massive government subsidies; 2) environmental groups disregard the environmental impact of windmills on ridges, roads through forests to the sites, the loss of migratory birds/raptors, the massive footprint required to generate sufficient energy; and 3) the grid can allow rolling blackouts when the wind isn't blowing just right.

If the wind turbines can't keep up with the load, the three-phase current begins to lag behind and power operators are required to bring in additional supplies to compensate. The best way to do this currently would be using natural gas turbines, which can be brought from idled to fully operational within 30-60 minutes. Natural gas and coal boilers require many hours to come on line.

Wind requires 100% backup from traditional sources.

Very good thoughts on wind. The combined cycle natural gas plants are essential when wind is part of the mix because they are brought online so quickly. Given the recent technology in gas extraction from shale the near future is very bright for gas fired plants.

Texas actually uses about 10% for generation depending on the time of day. I've seen the grid sometimes have over 6,000 MW of generation from wind but because of it's unreliability there is always a gas plant cycling to provide backup. Without the backup there could be a sudden drop in generation which would cause blackouts and maybe some areas to go offline and it always takes time to bring areas back up online given the complexities of the system.

Wind is also only available where it blows and you can only put so many windfarms outside the house of RF . Actually, the wind corridor in the US provides a steady stream of wind for the most part, but it's also susceptible to tornadoes and transmission of this energy is expensive since there are not a lot of large municipalities along that route. There is significant wind on the coasts but the liberals tend to dominate those areas and they hate their view of the ocean being taken up by clean energy producing wind farms.

Why? If we can solve the storage problem (flywheels), and we accept the new view of the countryside, then why not?

I say a nationally regulated, limited monopoly just might be a good idea. I just don't know how to incorporate that model into the free energy market. I also fear the loss of profit motive to drive efficiency and innovation.

The natural gas pipeline is a great example of a nationally regulated, limited monopoly. It's regulated by FERC and is open to almost anyone, however the enormous cost of entering the market creates a quasi-oligopoly (hence the regulation). Ever since pipelines were moved to strictly "transportation" (pipelines cannot buy/sell natural gas for profit) under FERC order 636. It could work for nuclear plants, however the feds would have to work something out with the state in whcih the plant would reside as plants are usually regulated by the state's public utility commission as they don't cross state borders.

Literal LOL!

We, as a nation, are retards.

I think this post sums up everything pretty nicely.

[Mormon Red Death]

I am not particularly familiar with tethered kite technology, although I understand the concept. Launch a kite into the jetstream, have the high speed rush of the wind spin a turbine connected to an A/C or D/C generator, and transmit the power back to the ground.

A few thoughts. To make it worth effort each kite would need to develop, let's say, 1 MW each (the big wind turbines can generate 2.5MW). To be effective you would want the kite somewhere above 40,000 ft, right in the sweet spot for the jetstream. A tether long enough to put a kite that high would be a minimum of 56,000 feet long (assuming 45* angle with no slack - likely it would exceed 80,000 ft). The jetstream band is about 10,000 feet thick, so the kite would need to adjust position to remain within the area of greater strength.

The power lines required to transmit 1 MW of energy become an issue. Assuming you can generate power at 690 V, you would require 3 power lines of 500kcmil size weighing about 6.5 lb/ft (IIRC?). So 3*6.5*80,000 = 1,560,000 lbs or 780 tons. Now add in the weight of the kite, turbine, etc. It would be feasible to have 3,000 tons flying around at 40,000 ft altitude without anything to guarantee it will remain aloft if it fell from the "power zone". Those big railroad coal cars each carry ~120 tons of coal, so this thing could be the equivalent

Even if the design could be proven, the public would never buy it. How much potential damage would occur if it failed and fell? How would you predict where it would fall, if it is designed to follow a dynamically changing jetstream? It could fall anywhere within 15 miles of the base station.

Now if you are talking about using the MOTION of a tethered kite to generate power within a ground station, that is a different story. It may be possible to generate some power from the pull generated by a kite. By putting it on a rocker/piston mechanism similar to a locomotive wheel driver it could even be fairly efficient. The expected power output would be a significant problem, as it would need to be MAMMOTH to approach the energy output of a small wind turbine. And you would need hundreds/thousands to match the output of a typical coal or natural gas plant.

For both types, lightning is a big problem. As is the closing off of large swaths of airspace.


Now for the flywheel. Efficiency = (Energy Out)/(Energy In - Losses). The biggest loss would be friction, or course. Other losses would be caused by energy required to sustain the steady-state, and controls to counter the effects of gyroscopic precession (which would be a big problem with a huge flywheel), energy conversion from the power generated by the turbine blades to the energy requried to spin the flywheel (unless it is installed inside the wind turbine itself).

The flywheel in a vacuum with magnetic bearings is a fairly effective in maintaining kinetic energy. Frictional losses would be minimal.

However power requirements to maintain the vacuum would be enormous. The act of spinning the flywheel up to speed would take a large amount of energy. Begin to draw power from the flywheel and it would slow down and become a less and less efficient of a power storage method. Time would be the enemy.

In my opinion Flywheels would serve better as a capacitance, levelling the peaks and valleys of the power output of the wind turbine. The only way they could provide sufficient peak power for more than a short amount of time (a few minutes) when the turbines are not producing sufficient power would be for the flywheel to contain a significant amount of kinetic energy. To generate 2.5 MW for hours at a time would require a flywheel with a very large mass spinning very fast.

One last thing: if the flywheel is located in the hub of the wind turbine, how much damage would it do if it somehow escapes? A large mass spinning at a high rotational velocity and falling from a few hundred feet would become the Tasmanian Devil when it hit the ground, destroying much before all the energy is dissipated.

Howzat?

Why not transmit the energy via microwaves? To not have to have the long wires

Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide using Tapatalk

[Moliere]

I think this is a knee jerk reaction. The reactors that are being built currently are 40+ years ahead, considering the engineering and safety that is being factored in with the designs.

Ah, the hubris of humans. I don't dispute we build safer reactors now, but there will always be something that can go wrong.

FWIW, natural gas turbines are probably the most efficient method of power generation. Some of the newer GE turbines can approach/exceed 90% efficiency, speaking in terms of power out/power in. The only emissions are CO2 and H2O, and nothing else.

Gas and coal boiler plants push very hard to approach ~30% efficiency, and nuclear is roughly in the same ballpark (although nuclear almost completely minimizes exhaust emissions). Emissions include CO2 and H2O, but also CO, several sulfur compounds, ash, etc. Some of these are nastier than others of course.

This is why electric vehicles make no sense right now. In the future with cleaner energy they might be great, but right now, with the majority of electricity being produced by coal plants, they are very ineffecient in terms of energy. I've heard that natural gas is around 85% efficient and electricity from coal fired plants is around 35% efficient. CNG vehicles makes more sense right now than electrics.

I have a buddy who is a nuc plant operator in North Carolina, and he started at $128/hr during training. When he gained his license he jumped to $162/hr, and will only go up from there. He was a nuc in the Navy, so he already had a lot of experience plus the GI bill paid for his BS and MS in engineering. I have to say it sounds very appealing. Lots of stress, though.

No wonder nuclears plants cost so much!

The figures are 2005 estimated leveled cost of electricity and I pulled them from a recent MIT study on the future of natural gas. It's an interesting read (for me) and I'll link it and share more thoughts later.

FYI - leveled costs assume the plant fully recovers operating, fuel, capital and financial costs (which I assume means start up costs as well)

Here's a link to the report I just read. I get a lot of these things emailed to me but this one did a great job of covering all aspects of energy and was written in a way that many that are not in this type of business could understand.

Howzat?

[YOUTUBE]9PGKG5ZFMQg[/YOUTUBE]

[NorthwestUteFan]

Why not transmit the energy via microwaves? To not have to have the long wires

Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide using Tapatalk

Why not skip the kites completely and build geosynchronous satellites with enormous solar arrays, and use those to beam power directly to a ground station?

While theoretically possible, I don't know that they are yet capable of transmitting more than a few kW, and higher energy levels would mean beams with higher energy.

That energy can be transmitted through microwaves is a known fact. The Soviet Mig 25 was allegedly able to instantly "cook" a rabbit at 1km by turning the radar on while on the ground (turning it on while the plane was on the ground was prosecuted as a felony).

I know this much about microwave power transmission -> "0.00000001" (very little)

[NorthwestUteFan]

No wonder nuclears plants cost so much!

They are so enormously profitable that the employee cost is minimal. The nuc operating companies also are directly funding Yucca Mtn, completely without any federal dollars.

Ironically a few of the biggest nuclear plant operators merely purchased the assets of bankrupted or financially troubled electrical power companies for a song, and now run them far better than ever.

CNG vehicles makes more sense right now than electrics.

I used to work at Questar when I was in school (I WISH I had purchased stock when I was there...GRRR!). For a while there was a big push to run cars directly on hydrogen, converted directly from natural gas.

Besides making each car a potential bomb*, the total expected energy output was quite a bit less than if the cars burned the CNG directly. Plus, CNG cars are already on the market!


*the explosions at the Fukushima plants were all hydrogen explosions.

[old_gregg]

Besides making each car a potential bomb*, the total expected energy output was quite a bit less than if the cars burned the CNG directly. Plus, CNG cars are already on the market!


*the explosions at the Fukushima plants were all hydrogen explosions.

cng cars are for girly men. (unless it's a v12 sl600 turning out 800bhp)