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Forum Index : Off topic archive. : Hydro an answer to wind farm lulls?
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5116 |
There was a show on ABC TV last night ( Australian TV ) called Britain from Above. It was about how the different systems we take for granted actually manage to work, like the transport system and phone system. It was all very flashy graphics that make you go "ahhh", but there was some real facts behind the glamor. One thing that grabbed my attention was the way they manage the power grid. Apparently the UK has a unique problem with certain TV shows ( probably "Neighbors" ), when the show finished, and the commercials start, a big percentage of the population get up and pop the kettle on for a cuppa tea. This ends up sucking gigawatts out of the power grid in a matter of seconds. So to fix the problem, they have a guy in a control room with a TV set. Just before the TV show finishes, he gets the hydro-electric power stations, and a feed from France, on standby. Then the moment the TV commercials start, he dials up a few extra gigawatts of power from the hydro and France links into the power grid. He monitors the mains frequency to see if he needs to make any changes, as the frequency is a good indicator of load. The system works. Now from this I learned that hydro power stations can very quickly adjust their power outputs, from nil to full power in a few seconds. Pretty obvious really, when you think about it. Water and gravity is a very versatile form of energy storage. This is totally different from a fuel burning power station that needs many hours to get fired up, and only runs efficiently in a narrow band of power output levels. The reason off peak power is offered cheap is the power stations don't want to turn down the power output. Recently there has been a lot of negative discussion about wind farms in Silicon Chip magazine. The one big negative about wind farms, which we have to agree with, is the wildly varying output power. Windmill output is all over the place, we know that, which is why we call the raw output from our home made turbines "wild AC". The big wind turbines can adjust their blade angle to smooth out the power level to some extent, but a lull in the wind means the power will drop, simple. So could we use a system similar to the UK's system? It's easy to predict when a lull in the wind is coming, just a matter of erecting weather stations in a 5 or 10km radius around the wind farm. If a lull is detected, a hydro power station could be dialed up to fill the gap in wind power. The problem is, of course, the electricity grid can work like this. Especially in a country like Australia with the vast distance between power stations. But I thinks its a solution to the problem of wind power and changing wind speed. What do you think? Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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Downwind Guru  Joined: 09/09/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2333 |
It opens a window of thought here for the home user. If one has space permitting than when wind is good and the batteries are full to the point of dumping power it could be usefull to pump water from say a dam or lower storage area up to a higher storage area. With the use of a pipe to flow the water back down to the lower storage area via a hydro generator on the low wind days. From what i had read so far on hydro it is not a huge amount of flow from a big height needed to generate reasonable power. Lets say a water battery. Like all batteries the capacity is only limited by the storage resivior. It would make more sense than dumping the power on the windy days. Pete. Sometimes it just works |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5116 |
Has anyone ever used a water tank and small hydro setup as a viable power supply? A water tank isn't that expensive, and will last decades, so I wonder if its feasable as a battery? The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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GWatPE Senior Member  Joined: 01/09/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2127 |
Hi Gizmo, I believe that the Snowy mountains hydro has been moving water between dams in a similar way, but uses coal fired turbines to pump water back up the hill during the night with cheaper off-peak power, and the water then reverses direction during peak times to supply demand. The turbines work equally well as pumps. Gordon. PS: When I was interviewed by Channel 7, I suggested a better national grid, to better make use of power from all around the country. Transmission is the problem, with the considerable losses associated with long distances. The Snowy system works due the close proximity to Sydney, and the big coal fired power stations set up for it. become more energy aware |
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| domwild Guru Joined: 16/12/2005 Location: AustraliaPosts: 873 |
Gordon, Austria is a country with lots of pumping stations which pump the water back into the huge dams with the cheaper electricity generated at night. I did not know the turbines can work as pumps too. This juice can then be sold in Europe during day time for a better price. Re wind farms: I hope there is no truth in the rumour that mills generate infrasound or very low Hz sound waves, which have a detrimental health effect on neighbours. Infrasound has been examined for military purposes and initially scientists were not careful and found one can be killed by internal bleeding as here is some sort of resonance happening in the blood vessels. Rumour: Infrasound has been used in Ireland to excite demonstrators to become violent to give the police an excuse to step in?? Rumour: Infrasound was responsible for the biblical story where the Trumpets of Jericho managed to topple stone walls?? Taxation as a means of achieving prosperity is like a man standing inside a bucket trying to lift himself up. Winston Churchill |
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Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1450 |
I did have a brain fart of an idea years ago when we bought the farm. We have a natural spring that runs down the hill into my back dam and I'd luv to put a small holding dam 1/2 way up the hill, put a pipe in and install a decent water ram below it. That would pump the water up to the top of the hill then a 200ft head down the hill via the back of my shed into the front dam. The problem of course is laying out the cash for all the piping and the downward pipe would need to be a decent size as friction is the big loser in high head small piping. Another big problem for 3 years the spring didn't run but it is running again now. I do have a dam not far from my shed and the output from the micro turbine could power another water ram to pump the water back around the hill on the low side feeding water troughs for stock. Water rams at best are only in the 25-40% efficiency range but hell if water is powering the thing and a small bit of RE energy comes out, all my dams will have water all year around and self filling water troughs. The main problem with having a farm and being an RE nut is the wild idea's one gets to make RE energy. They do say it's an uncurable disease but an enjoyable one..... |
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| Downwind Guru Joined: 09/09/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2333 |
Hi Bryan, From what you have discribed you water sources like could be put to work in an RE benifit i think. Maybe a solar pump could be used to pump water up hill on a slow rate during the day and flow it back down at night via a hydro turbine at a higher rate when the house demand is heavier. This would form a big bulky water battery, but if you have the space and the dams already (batteries) than it could be worth considering the brain fart a bit more. 40mm rural poly is not that expencive and over 200ft you would end up with around 25mm full flow capacity i would think. With a 100ft elevation it would give 43psi and a workable pressure. If you have excess wind energy during the night then dump it through the inverter with a pump pushing water up hill to the big battery. It would allow for a lot of energy storage that could be called upon on demand. Maybe im dreaming here but sounds like an interesting concept. Pete. Sometimes it just works |
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| Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1450 |
O'well Pete, Sounds like ya putting ya hand up to come help building the holding dam, it will have to be hand done as due to the terrain getting the tractor in will be near impossible. Just one thing to watch if Blacky comes over to say hello dont run away or you might be lunch. He's only about a 12-14' black snake and i've got close to it a few times. I found just standing still and watching him then when he pops his headup look away. He or she has been there since we bought the place and it does a good job on the vermon. Oh and as it's in a gully if you see a roo DUCK as they luv jumping over it and the last thing ya need is losing your hat or at worst a toupee.... Cheers Bryan |
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| Downwind Guru Joined: 09/09/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2333 |
Brian, I dont mind snakes if i have a long handle shovel in hand. (seams like the basic requirement for the task at hand) I would not mind dropping up for a gander some day, but a little unsure about bring a snake charmer with me. I think i have hung off the skinny end of one of them enough in life thus far. I dont have a toupee and rearly wear a hat. I do like coffee though. Water can be use to a great advantage in RE i think if one has the lay of the land to suit. RE is really a matter of making the best out of the resources you have at hand and not what you wish you have. You put the kettle on and i will come to visit. Pete. Sometimes it just works |
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KarlJ Guru Joined: 19/05/2008 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1178 |
I did the maths for all the sheds about the farmhouse collection area in the order of 2000m2 so with rain would collect quite a lot of water, there are several tanks too a 45000L tank and 4x 23,000L tanks plus another tank on top of the hill (a further 20m elevation) now to make useful power of a few hundred watts you need to be moving at least a couple of litres a second which adds up to a serious amount of water very quickly. Frankly in our water situation (drought) using collected rainwater like this is both expensive and wasteful -unless you can reasonably irrigate a patch with the "waste" water all getting very expensive by now and if you were desperate -and i dont think anyone is that desperate it could be done better option with excess power is getting paid for it right now via the Grid! Luck favours the well prepared |
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| Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1450 |
Yea in my situation yes I have plenty of head to run a micro hydro but it does take a huge volume of water to make some decent power. There are online calculators for hydro and the figures quoted to make 1kw @ 24 volts are really scary. For me it would cost near 3K in water pipe to setup and being off the grid thats about 3 years or more of running the genset to keep the batteries charged. Plus i'd be looking at a 50,000 gal tank on the hill to discharge when I wanted micro hydro. Basically if you don't have a stream running 24/7 thru your place then trying some brain fart of an idea is a costly exercise. life is a beach but reality sometime hurts Cheers Bryan |
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Loomberah Regular Member  Joined: 11/06/2008 Location: AustraliaPosts: 43 |
I'm in the middle of doing that at the moment, I have all the bits, but am stuck with the problem of getting the 63mm poly pipe up to the tank. I'll probably end up buying some joiners (expensive in 63mm) and cut the pipe into manageable lengths. The tank is at a head of 85m, so its 10500l capactity should store somewhere between 1 and 1.5kWh, depending on how efficient the alternator is. I have a pelton turbine from RPC, and will be experimenting with it on a couple of different alternators, including a chinese 200W windmill alternator. I know its good for 375W when run through a MPPT regulator. I have a mono pump to get the water up the hill and will be using excess solar/wind power when the batteries are floating. It will pump up to 120m, and I can add a few more tanks a bit further up the hill if it works out ok. The water will also be able to be used for firefighting purposes around the house if required. I'll be happy if I can get 50% efficiency out of it. Not as good as battery charging I know, but thats not really important when I have plenty of kWh for pumping available, to be stored for cloudy weather, night time welding etc. Loomberah weather +solar&UV, astronomy, photography, organic farm |
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MacGyver Guru Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
[Quote=Gizmo]Has anyone ever used a water tank and small hydro setup as a viable power supply? Well, no; not exactly. I used to pump and hold air, then run it through small air engines coupled to generators, but the crew here has turned my thinking around and now I'm in the process of building an ax-fx alternator to make electricity directly from the wind. It occurs to me that a "quick fix" idea might be to manufacture a small dynamometer that you could roll your car's tires onto and couple that to a generator. I know petrol is expensive, but seeing as how costly the infrastructure is to manufacture a tiered-dam and lake system to support micro hydro, it might prove a more-feasible method. For the "purists" among us, I can show how to make a stationary concentrating solar collector that turns wood chips into methanol. The methanol can then be used to run the car's engine. That way, we're not completely out of the "RE" loop! By the way, if anyone decides to make methanol, don't get it on your skin and don't breathe the fumes!!!! . . . . . Mac Nothing difficult is ever easy! Perhaps better stated in the words of Morgan Freeman, "Where there is no struggle, there is no progress!" Copeville, Texas |
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| Downwind Guru Joined: 09/09/2009 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2333 |
I dont know if i would consider woodchipping trees in the RE loop. With saying that i often see truck loads of chipped trees and bushes from council pruinings and domestic tree removealls that end up in land fill most times. Pete. Sometimes it just works |
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| grub Senior Member Joined: 27/11/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 169 |
While searching for infomation on the Web I came across a site that showed one how to build a "gasifier" (those large drums that one saw on 2nd world war vehicles) that used wood chips instead of charcoal. I collected the information and made it into a single document. If you are interest I could post here, if allowed to. Just remember, you can always plant a new tree. |
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| domwild Guru Joined: 16/12/2005 Location: AustraliaPosts: 873 |
Gordon, Re turbine/pump combination: The Austrians use Pelton turbines in their high head (mountains)/low volume situations. I do not think Peltons can be used to pump water. They must use separate pumping stations. Must be worthwhile. I do not wish to talk politics amongst friends but nuclear would be a solution as baseload. Pros: Fewer deaths of coal miners, stable geology in Oz for storage of waste, China will no longer be able to claim we emit more CO2 per head than they, lots of Uranium. Cons: Higher temp. discharge of cooling water into the sea, possibility of radioactive discharges and a possibility there is no place in Oz along the coast, which has the grid running alongside with no houses nearby and whichever party proposes nuclear is going to lose the election. The Whitlam gov. decided not to support nuclear as we could be seen starting a nuclear arms race in SE Asia. Ironies: Indonesia is building one now on a seismic fault line! Austria mothballed a brand new reactor after protests only to find the neighbours (Slovakia?) built one right on the border 80 km away! Taxation as a means of achieving prosperity is like a man standing inside a bucket trying to lift himself up. Winston Churchill |
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| KarlJ Guru Joined: 19/05/2008 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1178 |
He he I reckon Australia could in fact be a world superpower. In the next couple of years Australia will export more energy than the entire Saudi Arabian area does now with oil -Fact However -to be really in the money charge to store nuclear waste, if anyone has been out there to central Australian deserts you will agree. Millions of acres of useless land -very stable deep water table. Dig big hole, line it with 30M of concrete, impermeable barriers etc and charge by the year for storage of the waste. All the greenies saying "not in my backyard" are they kidding? a far better alternative is just to throw it over the side in deep water -yeah right! The Russians have been doing just that....nuclear boat time expired, forget recovery and proper storage just skuttle the boat and add a pile of waste from other reactors at the same time. my theory is to charge $100/KG for waste per year with inflation of 3% for the half life of the material. turn the lot into synrock (CSIRO invention basically seals it into glass eggs) All of a sudden we have a squillion dollar industry for the next 100,000 years! and arguably we do have the best spot on earth for it. Nuclear may not be the best long-long term solution as the uranium 235 resource is limited but its pretty good until better technology is developed. PRO NUCLEAR = KarlJ beats the sh*t out of coal. Imagine hundreds of tons of CO2 per year VS nuclear with less than 1KG of waste material -for your entire life's energy requirement. I found this article has similar views to myself in that the risk = 2/3 of SFA. nuclear risk to Humans Luck favours the well prepared |
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| GWatPE Senior Member Joined: 01/09/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2127 |
Hi Dom, the turbines in the snowy scheme are akin to the turbine design used in a turbo-charger. This turbine design can drive a shaft, or the shaft can drive the turbine. I don't think the pelton wheel can in any configuration direct the flow back through the jet. I think the turbines were European. I seem to remember ASEA on the generators, which I think were synchronous motors. Gordon. become more energy aware |
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SSW_squall Senior Member Joined: 20/03/2010 Location: AustraliaPosts: 111 |
Interesting discussion... The snowy hydro turbines are otherwise known as FRANCIS machine, good for medium heads of generally less than 100m. Loomberah: That's an impressive head on your tank !!! 85m is 830kPa, the rural green stripe poly pipe is only rated for 630kPa, are you using the metric blue stripe stuff??? Because we only have rainwater at our house we have a rather large amount water storage, 2x plastic tanks under the house totaling 22,500L that also double as storage for fire protection purposes. And a 22000L concrete tank above the house that gravity feeds with a pump for extra pressure. We also pump water up approx 40m (vertically) from the dam to a 1000L header that is used for garden watering, animal watering ect Give the deluge we experienced the other morning all tanks are almost full, and winter hasn't even started yet!! My thought is to direct the overflow water into the pipe that goes down the hill to the dam and use that to run yet another? micro hydro generator. 0.5L/s x 40m x 9.8 x 0.60(% efficiency) = 117W AB Einstein: Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler |
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| Loomberah Regular Member Joined: 11/06/2008 Location: AustraliaPosts: 43 |
Green stripe rural poly is only good for small heads, there'll be none of that in my hydro system! Yes I'm using metric blue stripe 63mm PN8 (800kPa)for the top part of the pipe run and 50mm PN10 (1000Pa) (maybe doubled up for some of it if I have enough) for the lower part, as well as a blow-off valve in case I accdentally close a tap too fast. Its all rain water from the house and shed roof, I've got about 90000l of storage, and automatically pump to a 25m head 5000l tank with excess power for house and garden use. Loomberah weather +solar&UV, astronomy, photography, organic farm |
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