madkayaker
Pro sparkey Pro Welder
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who supplies the beans RTB?
who supplies the beans RTB?
That reminds me, another way of storing wind energy would as gas. Use the turbine to produce hydrogen and store that. IIRC electrolysis starts at 1 volt so a whole range of wind speeds could be used, and there's no need to sync with the grid. In high winds instead of burning off surplus energy just connect more cells.
The H2 could be burnt in a fuel cell or turbine to produce a steady current.
Thanks for the quick reply FBN. The available head on the stream is around 10m over a distance of approx 500m (estimated from having to walk up and down the hill a lot recently ). From memory that should give me around 1barg at the bottom of a hose - I haven't measured the flow rate yet, but could get a reasonable estimate by the bucket-and-stopwatch method.
There is also a non-permanent spring running from slightly higher ground, which could give additional power during the winter for running the lighting in the stock sheds.
Thanks for the links Pete3000, lots of reading to do now.
Can't remember the maths off the top of my head but I would reckon that 10M would give you loads of potential for generating electricity. And with the seasonal stream as well those winter fuel bills could almost vanish!
Once the water has passed through the turbine use a Ram Pump to get some of the water back up again for free!