Trevorleach
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- Thread starter Morrisman
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DAPPH
as dyslexik as I'm daft
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You can also use pulsed light to generate electricity so shoving pulsed sunlight into fibre optics and running the light thousands of miles to be converted into electricity may be a worthwhile area to try and develop to fruition .
DAPPH
as dyslexik as I'm daft
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Have more hydrogen generators doing it , then at some point the inefficiency won't matter especially if there is a low maintenance regime to keep them running safely .
Isn't that how The Dutch drained their wetlands & Cornelius Vermuyden tamed the Lincolnshire & Norfolk fens with windmills for water pumps as they could pump 24/7 when needed .
Morrisman
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'Hit and miss' engines, they will fire properly, every second revolution, once you load them up and the governor kicks in.
I've never seen one of those cars - interesting! Using flywheels to store energy though (as you say) is nothing new. The old Lister engined generators would punch well above their rated power for starting electric motors, because they weren't relying on the immediate power of the engine - but had a lot of stored energy in their heavy flywheels that would carry the engine through the transient overload.
What is less well known - is that many years ago massive (& I mean massive) flywheels were employed as "Rotary UPS" instead of a battery bank.
The huge flywheel was slowly and steadily ramped up to speed, and once there its sheer mass meant that very little input was required to maintain its speed.
Then during a loss of Mains, the energy stored in the flywheel was used to sustain the site electrical load.
Back in the early 1970 Wiggins Teape No 5 paper Mill in Dartford had a computer control system powered by a mains motor driving an alternator with a huge flywheel between them. The idea was that in the event of mains failure the flywheel would provide energy for long enough to close the computer down in an orderly manner. Simple and effective.
(It was an early Ferranti Argus 400 with Argus 100 input / output racks as the A400 i/o hadn't been developed at that stage)
I would be far more in favour of flywheel batteries than all the other stupid ideas out there. I know BT had some for backup years ago. Air or magnetic bearings running in a vacuum chamber. The losses would be minimal then. And would provide frequency stability as well. A proper engineers solution. Far better than stupid batteries made out of dodgy chemicals.
There are still companies doing rotary UPS today (usually with diesel generator back-up to be able to maintain supply indefinitely - which is what static battery UPS also tend to have as well).
It amuses me (but not much!) seeing all the adverts for Hybrid & EV vehicles over the last few years - touting the tech as if its some brand-new miraculous invention - when the truth is that all this stuff has been around, proved and in use in one form or another, for several decades.
Hell the small firm I worked for was installing "hybrid" off-grid generator-battery-inverter systems 30-years-ago.... and they weren't anything like "new" then!
Seadog
Save the planet. It's the only one with rum!
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Still used for UPS. We used to have a couple of small Pillers for the system room at LIFFE. I think that the flywheels had enough energy to support the systems for 15 minutes, by which time the diesel genny had kicked in and synchronised
Morrisman
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The seismic survey ships I used to work on had what they called 'clean power generators'. There were two motors, running off ships power, which ran a pair of generators, which powered a huge 'ups' bank of batteries, which then lead to the ships instrument room, which had about 50 complex computer navigation and recording systems. Real belt and braces stuff, to protect the computers from any sort of power surge or outage.
julianthegypsy
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Renewables have actually come on leaps and bounds in the last decade. Still nowhere as good as they should be, but that's because gas has been cheap and is owned by big companies with lots of money for political donations and governments that can't think beyond the next election. We could have solar panels on every factory, warehouse and car park, which would also take care of charging EVs as well as keeping the cars in the shade, but governments aren't interested and renewable energy companies are small and don't donate to the right people.
DennisCA
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Renewables are indeed the reason we're in this mess and this is their true hidden cost, particularly when we're shutting down safe, stable production in europe in favour of them. Nevermind that per kWh to CO2 they aren't the best choice either. Renewables are big business nowadays and are in bed with the fossil fuel sector to boot.
There is no solution for their intemittency problem except pairing hydro (maxxed out), then it's fossil fuels such as gas, coal and oil and let me tell you, there ain't going to be any solutions. You'll see commercial fusion power take off before this, that's how far off the idea of large scale economical storage is. On average you will see a wind turbine produce 1/5th it's name place capacity over a year, the rest has to be filled with something else. This has historically been natural gas, which is why europe is so dependant on Putin. And why Germany fought so hard to make the EU classify a fossil fuel as green.
All the talk about all these solutions and storage, a huge part of them are just a scam to get grant money and will never go anywhere. And infuriatingly pop-sci media and regular media like to jump on it like it's christ come again. Eventually it peters out and goes away.
I literally think commercial fusion is more likely to come first.
There is no solution for their intemittency problem except pairing hydro (maxxed out), then it's fossil fuels such as gas, coal and oil and let me tell you, there ain't going to be any solutions. You'll see commercial fusion power take off before this, that's how far off the idea of large scale economical storage is. On average you will see a wind turbine produce 1/5th it's name place capacity over a year, the rest has to be filled with something else. This has historically been natural gas, which is why europe is so dependant on Putin. And why Germany fought so hard to make the EU classify a fossil fuel as green.
All the talk about all these solutions and storage, a huge part of them are just a scam to get grant money and will never go anywhere. And infuriatingly pop-sci media and regular media like to jump on it like it's christ come again. Eventually it peters out and goes away.
I literally think commercial fusion is more likely to come first.
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Hit and miss engines only fire when the revs drop and governor engages the striker arm, they can do quite a few revs between firing due to the exhaust valve is held open so it "freewheels"
If you want an oddball, how about the Aermotor 8 cycle engine
How good is solar in Winter in Britain?
London in the South is further North than any city in Canada.
It's only when you look at a globe you realise just how far up we are.
We have had literally months in Wales with total heavy cloud cover. No glimpse of any blue sky and rain for 3 months continuous. I know solar will still be generating but it is a fraction in those conditions - probably 10% or less.
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