Energy
I was thinking of writing an essay for some big energy essay competition. Was too much of a hassle, so I thought I'd just do a blog post.
I wonder where the future is going. There's some good stuff around and about - lots of wind, solar's improving slowly, there have been some big developments in wave/tidal and hydro is always a solid performer.
Of course, being in the wind industry, I've got a bit of an idea of what's going on there. The size of wind turbines is starting to stabilise at about the 1.5-3MW/turbine size (blade length of about 50m at a hub height of 70m). But as the amount of power produced by wind energy increases, so does the reliance on it to produce. Therein lies a pandora's box of technical problems. Everything from lack of parts, and not enough qualified people to maintain them, through to the questionable fault ride through capabilities of wind turbines (Faults referring to electrical faults as well as big wind gusts, etc.) and accurate short to medium term wind speed prediction.
However, because countries like Germany and Denmark have significant feed-in tariffs (a guaranteed price for all energy produced by the turbines) there has been a large market for the turbines. And as such, the technology is also developing to begin to solve (or lessen) the aforementioned problems. It means that we can start to rely more and more heavily on these renewable energies.
Insofar as the intermittent nature of the wind is concerned, there is very good reason why the turbines are connected to a grid, and, in this Australian context, that grid spans from South Australia, down to Tasmania and up to Queensland. While the wind is still in South Australia, it's likely to be blowing elsewhere.
The grid issue is the key reason why energy storage is not as big a deal as it could be. The grid itself acts as a battery, sapping all the energy that a wind turbine can produce.
The intermittency issue is an interesting one in terms of solar power - in particular photovoltaics (solar panels). It would be quite cool to have a global grid that covers the world, so that no matter what point in time, the sun would always be shining on the cells. It's not likely to happen any time soon.
The big issue that I see hitting hard is fuel. I can only really talk about what I've heard in my studies, because I haven't had anything to do with that side of things since then. Biodiesel is looking good. It works, but it needs to be done properly. The most interesting thing I heard was talk of farming algae in pipes and harvesting oil from it. Some amazing yields were possible, but they have to refine it somewhat.
What are some of the good or bad ideas that you've heard?
And where did those little electric cars go?
And why can't Tassie have decent cycle access - it's appalling at the moment.
I wonder where the future is going. There's some good stuff around and about - lots of wind, solar's improving slowly, there have been some big developments in wave/tidal and hydro is always a solid performer.
Of course, being in the wind industry, I've got a bit of an idea of what's going on there. The size of wind turbines is starting to stabilise at about the 1.5-3MW/turbine size (blade length of about 50m at a hub height of 70m). But as the amount of power produced by wind energy increases, so does the reliance on it to produce. Therein lies a pandora's box of technical problems. Everything from lack of parts, and not enough qualified people to maintain them, through to the questionable fault ride through capabilities of wind turbines (Faults referring to electrical faults as well as big wind gusts, etc.) and accurate short to medium term wind speed prediction.
However, because countries like Germany and Denmark have significant feed-in tariffs (a guaranteed price for all energy produced by the turbines) there has been a large market for the turbines. And as such, the technology is also developing to begin to solve (or lessen) the aforementioned problems. It means that we can start to rely more and more heavily on these renewable energies.
Insofar as the intermittent nature of the wind is concerned, there is very good reason why the turbines are connected to a grid, and, in this Australian context, that grid spans from South Australia, down to Tasmania and up to Queensland. While the wind is still in South Australia, it's likely to be blowing elsewhere.
The grid issue is the key reason why energy storage is not as big a deal as it could be. The grid itself acts as a battery, sapping all the energy that a wind turbine can produce.
The intermittency issue is an interesting one in terms of solar power - in particular photovoltaics (solar panels). It would be quite cool to have a global grid that covers the world, so that no matter what point in time, the sun would always be shining on the cells. It's not likely to happen any time soon.
The big issue that I see hitting hard is fuel. I can only really talk about what I've heard in my studies, because I haven't had anything to do with that side of things since then. Biodiesel is looking good. It works, but it needs to be done properly. The most interesting thing I heard was talk of farming algae in pipes and harvesting oil from it. Some amazing yields were possible, but they have to refine it somewhat.
What are some of the good or bad ideas that you've heard?
And where did those little electric cars go?
And why can't Tassie have decent cycle access - it's appalling at the moment.
posted by BSJ-rom at 8:37 pm
2 Comments:
I saw a thing on telly about using corn as a biofuel. They said it was incredibly uneconomical to extract ethanol from corn (apparently only sugar cane is efficient enough), and farmers in south america were clearing rainforest to plant it. So they were actually increasing emissions of CO2, as well as reducing food production and therefore pushing up food prices.
Sounds like a sadly south american way of doing things. I tried drinking bundy rum straight, and yes, far better off used as biofuel.
But there's still stupid stuff like flaring land fill gas which should make some worthwhile differences to CO2 emissions. Doesn't really solve the fuel problem though.
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