 | The Bullroarer - Thursday 31st July 2008 | The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | The Bullroarer - Sunday 3 August 2008 |  |
16 comments on The Bullroarer - Friday 1st August 2008
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
16 comments on The Bullroarer - Friday 1st August 2008
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
User login
Contact
- anz at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Archives
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
GAIA Host Collective
Anyone hear qualified to comment on the possibilities for using pumped storage with seawater in Australia?
As in, any reason we couldn't build giant wind farms along coastal cliff tops, with giant water basins at the top of cliffs, with the wind turbines pumping water into the basins and hydro turbines generating electricity as it flows back out?
Obviously there's issues with scale, corrosion, environmental impacts etc. etc., but does it at least sound feasible?
Its possible and the idea has some consideration elsewhere.
Personally I think its worth investigating further - not sure how wind + pumped sea water storage compares to CSP + storage or wind + hydrogen, as examples of alternatives.
See here for some thoughts and links:
http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3643
I think the biggest obstacle would be the NIMBY and BANANA and the eco-naturalist greenies. Salt water is nasty stuff and the last thing you want to do is risk any more salt escaping into agricultural land.
Of course if it could be desalinated first and sent to the interior, generating power along the way, it would get a much better reception. my feelings are that it is really only hydro storage that is scalable to make Solar CSP or wind viable.
The limiting factor is always going to be having the storages big enough to both store the water as it goes up and back down the hill. Leaving enough airspace in a large dam is necessary to allow for rain events and you still need to have a certain amount of throughput to keep downstream rivers supplied.
The Snowy Scheme is largely about water security rather than power generation but it could be utlised better if it had a reliable source of water such as from large scale desal. This would allow it to release water for irrigation when its needed rather than releasing or keeping water in storage for power generation only.
You don't pump the salt water inland - you build an artifcial "island" (actually the reverse of an island) on the coastline - pump the water out (into the sea) then let it run back in again when your wind or tidal or wave or solar power plant isn't generating and grid prices are good. Farmer resistance should be non-existant and greenie opposition limited.
Looking at other storage options, pumped hydro is just one alternative - CSP plants use molten salt or graphite (or just hot water, in Ausra's case) to store energy in the form of heat. There are wind power projects using compressed air and hydrogen as the energy storage mechanisms. Flow batteries seem to be getting used in a few applications now too.
Curious. Is there a reason that the tower structure of a wind turbine can't incorporate a large compressed air storage vessel?
And instead of generating electricity (using wind) to drive a compressor, why, if we want to store compressed air cant we just disengage the generator - and engage a compressor on the same shaft?
Anybody with thoughts?
On the pumped storage. The head of water is critical.. although different turbine designs can be used for low heads... you are going to have to move a greater volume.
As it happens there's highly educational new post over on the Canadian TOD page which talks about the efficiency of compressed air energy storage.
http://canada.theoildrum.com/node/3473
Using a turbine tower as a great big air cylinder is a good bit of lateral thinking, but as the Canadians discuss at length, the efficient storage of compressed air requires multi-stage compression and efficient secondary storage for the enormous waste heat, such as firebrick heat-sink structures.
This is still not out of the question, and maybe a neat design could be dreamed up that could fit say ten air tanks inside the tower along with associated piping and heat sinks, and make the whole thing work reliably several kilometres offshore, but as you can see, this is much more complex than your original concept.
Perhaps we couldjust use an existing natural structure like Sydney Harbour. No farmers to upset!
I wonder if you could use abandoned mines as hydro reservoirs. You could pump water out when the wind blows and then run it back into the hole to run a turbine. I mean there are two hundred years of coal mines under the hunter valley alone, surely there must be some gigantic spaces down there.