Renewables North of the Border...

[Nick]

If we can find a safe way of storing it in bulk then Scotland will be ideally placed with a huge surplus of renewable energy from offshore wind to make any amount of the stuff. It is an ideal way of storing energy in windy times.

Which is interesting, because the biggest argument against wind energy is that the energy cannot be stored and is therefore all but useless because predictability is all in the power industry.

Yet it clearly can be stored.

Something's missing.

Yes. I believe using wind energy to make hydrogen could well be the missing link. I am (I think) prepared to put up with a Minch full of windmills if this technology comes to fruition.

[aquaplane]

That looks good.

If you are making and using hydrogen in a place like that where you can keep some sort of control over who is working with it and how they work it should be quite safe. Hydrogen has this usefull ability to go straight up when it leaks. If you keep out of the way and don't intorduce any ignition sources untill it's had chance to sod off it's fine. It does tend to like to burn though.

My concern is based mainly round letting joe public loose on the stuff, and then letting him drive round at speed with a tank/cylander/thingumy strapped under his car full of it.

[Arghiro]

(snip)
My concern is based mainly round letting joe public loose on the stuff, and then letting him drive round at speed with a tank/cylander/thingumy strapped under his car full of it.

Don't be silly, it's not as if any one is going to crash & burn is it? Oh, err, hmm . . .

[Telo]

If we can find a safe way of storing it in bulk then Scotland will be ideally placed with a huge surplus of renewable energy from offshore wind to make any amount of the stuff. It is an ideal way of storing energy in windy times.

That is the great attraction; convert unneeded power from whatever source eg windpower in the middle of the night at a low demand period, into hydrogen, and later use it to generate elecricity at peak periods. Only water left as a by-product, no CO2. That would be a major step forwards.

[Telo]

Which is interesting, because the biggest argument against wind energy is that the energy cannot be stored and is therefore all but useless because predictability is all in the power industry.

It can already be done with pumped storage hydro schemes at Cruachan, where surplus power (from whatever source) at low demand periods is pumped back up to the hydro dam from Loch Awe.

[Mark]

Which is interesting, because the biggest argument against wind energy is that the energy cannot be stored and is therefore all but useless because predictability is all in the power industry.

It can already be done with pumped storage hydro schemes at Cruachan, where surplus power (from whatever source) at low demand periods is pumped back up to the hydro dam from Loch Awe.

They do something similar from a Loch above Loch Ness. (However the power that stores is tiny. I remember being amazed that it was even enough for smoothing.)

[Nick]

Which is interesting, because the biggest argument against wind energy is that the energy cannot be stored and is therefore all but useless because predictability is all in the power industry.

It can already be done with pumped storage hydro schemes at Cruachan, where surplus power (from whatever source) at low demand periods is pumped back up to the hydro dam from Loch Awe.

Already mentioned in today's blog entry, The Problem With Wind. The extant schemes have a very limited capacity compared to the potential wind surplus though, and there is a lot of environmental opposition to new schemes.

[DaveS]

I think the R101 and Hindenberg put folk off hydrogen so it went out of fashion, the same arguements apply today.

The Hindenburg was originally designed to use helium for its obvious safety advantages, but the Mercans (who had an effective monopoly on helium) refused to sell Germany any since they were afraid that the zeppelins would take trans Atlantic traffic away from the new, but much less comfortable, Boing flying boat service. (A bit like an earlier version of Concorde's introduction.)

Without helium they used hydrogen and were able to increase the number of passengers due to the greater lift. Unfortunately, there was a down side...

It's only the disasters that are remembered. The Graf Zeppelin had many years of safe service. After the R101 disaster the British government destroyed Barnes Wallis' infinitely better engineered R100 without allowing it to fly.

[spuddy]

Good description of the R100 and the factors for R101 failure in Neville Shute's autobiography, "Sliderule". His bias shows but he is convincing.

[ParaHandy]

... so you can see my humble efforts at http://www.scotsrenewables.com.

anyone who achieves 100GWhr will be earning, with a half decent tariff. £0.25bn per day and will have to decide whether the Saltire prize is worth going for; if it takes more than an hour to fill the application in then probably not ....

The cost per KWhr of domestic electricity is getting ludicrous; typically electricity is 3.5 times the cost of gas and that's just to pay for what's going on now: FIT fit in tariffs, new High Voltage lines the length and breadth of Scoland with connections available to every tom dick and harry with a crackpot wind turbine or voltaic cell on his roof, and that's before we pay for an energy storage scheme, if one exists.

There's an arbritrage opportunity here and some smart git is going to make a fortune converting gas at 3p a KWhr into electricity at 10p a KWHr plus another 5 or 6p KWHr in hot water.

Whilst I have your (fleeting) attention, could I interest anyone in another arbritrage scheme with Tesco 5p a litre off fuel tickets?

[Nick]

... so you can see my humble efforts at http://www.scotsrenewables.com.

anyone who achieves 100GWhr will be earning, with a half decent tariff. £0.25bn per day and will have to decide whether the Saltire prize is worth going for; if it takes more than an hour to fill the application in then probably not ....

An interesting observation Para. I hope to see some knowledgeable or provocative comment on the blog from time to time from yourself and DaveS.

[So_Sage_of_Lorne]

[quote="ParaHandyThe cost per KWhr of domestic electricity is getting ludicrous; typically electricity is 3.5 times the cost of gas and that's just to pay for what's going on now: There's an arbritrage opportunity here and some smart git is going to make a fortune converting gas at 3p a KWhr into electricity at 10p a KWHr plus another 5 or 6p KWHr in hot water

quote]

If your price of 10p per KWhr is correct, the Trustees of Tarbert Harbour are well ahead of the game, they are currently reselling electrikery at 20p KWhr

[ash]

If your price of 10p per KWhr is correct, the Trustees of Tarbert Harbour are well ahead of the game, they are currently reselling electrikery at 20p KWhr

10p is likely to be far too low - 20p is probably not far off the mark by the time you add in Vat, daily standing charges, etc.

This Price List is for Domestic Supplies which won't be the rate that TTH are paying but may be the basis for the reselling. IIRC, there are strict rules for the costs of reselling of electricity. Do they also charge berth holders a fixed amount to cover their costs in providing the facility of electricity supply? Don't know how that bit works for visitors.

Ash

[DaveS]

They do something similar from a Loch above Loch Ness. (However the power that stores is tiny. I remember being amazed that it was even enough for smoothing.)

Foyers is rated at 300 MW (2 X 150 MW sets) which, while not huge, is approaching half the rating of a standard 660 MW thermal generating set, so can't in fairness be described as tiny either. Cruachan was originally rated at 400 MW (4 X 100 MW sets) but was uprated recently to (I think) 440 MW.

To put this in context the aggregate capacity of Scotland's conventional hydro electric generation is around 1200 MW.

However a pump storage scheme stores energy rather than power (obviously ), and since running continuously the upper reservoir can be emptied or filled in about 20 hours, the energy storage capacities of Foyers and Cruachan are about 6 GWh and 9 GWh respectively.

[DaveS]

Hydrogen has this usefull ability to go straight up when it leaks.

Indeed.

Not a rhetorical question, but does anyone know where hydrogen lies on the spectrum of greenhouse gas effectiveness?