Germany has many large wind mills. The gear boxes and generators are
expensive. The problem is there is no way of storing the energy. When
the wind blows there is not always a need for the power.
Here is a relatively low cost way of storing the energy. The wind
turbines are used as water pumps similar to oil pumps. No gear box.
No generator. The generator is replaced by a simple large water tank
on top of the pylon to store the energy.
The ground level water tank can be a lake. The water is recycled.
Many turbines can feed the same generator.
Paul & Robin Lamar in Germany
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Hi Paul;
It's a good idea - called pumped storage hydro that is not used as much
as it could-should be for load balancing the grid...
There are a few examples of coupled PSH + nuclear running 100% of the
time to good effect to effectively double peak output for a fractional
increase in capital costs.
Conservation is only lip service...some foolish generators actually PAY
others to take excess power!
Cheers
Cary
Paul,
the basic concept you describe already exists in Niagara Falls. People
who stand next to Niagara are often awe inspired by the millions of
gallons that flow every second. what most don't realize is that the are
only sing 25% to 50% of the real flow. At night when power demand is low
and the tourist sight are closed,75% of the water is diverted to the 22
Billion gallon reservoir (would qualify as a big lake in many places)
and essentially stored till the next morning. When power demand is high,
and they want to keep the Falls beautiful for tourists, the reservoir is
drained to generate even more power. As awe inspiring as it is to stand
close to the waterfalls, in reality the maximum anyone sees is 50% of
the natural flow and at times only 25%
What the Niagara Reservoir has that is an advantage is that due to the
escarpment, the water already starts out at the high elevation, so you
don't have the losses associated with pumping it to high elevation to
store the power. Its definitely worth a visit and there is a nice
visitor center at the power plant
by the way, they also have a similar system on the Canada side as they
do on the New York side
Here is an excerpt from Wikipdia
The pump-generating plant in the Lewiston Dam is atypical, in that the
dam was constructed not to control the flow of water in a natural river,
but rather to contain a man-made 1,900-acre (770 ha),
22-billion-US-gallon (83,000,000 m^3 ) upper reservoir (named the
Lewiston Reservoir) which stores the water before being released into
the forebay of the Robert Moses Power Station. Water enters the forebay
via tunnels from the Niagara River upstream of the natural falls. Water
in the forebay is then either pumped up into the upper reservoir or
immediately sent down over the escarpment downstream of the natural
falls into the Robert Moses Power Station turbines. The Lewiston
Pump-Generating Plant 43°08′33″N 79°01′18″W houses 12 electrically
powered pump generators that can generate a combined 240 megawatts
(320,000 hp) when water in the upper reservoir is released.
At night, a substantial fraction (600,000 US gallons (2,300 m^3 ) per
second) of the water in the Niagara River is diverted to the forebay by
two 700-foot (210 m) tunnels. Electricity generated in the Moses plant
is used to power the pumps to push water into the upper reservoir behind
the Lewiston Dam. The water is pumped at night because the demand for
electricity is much lower than during the day. In addition to the lower
demand for electricity at night, less water can be diverted from the
river during the day because of the desire to preserve the appearance of
the falls. During the following day, when electrical demand is high,
water is released from the upper reservoir through the pump-generators
in the Lewiston Dam. The water then flows into the forebay, where it
falls through the turbines of the Moses plant. Some would say that the
water is "used twice".
This arrangement is a variant of what is called pumped-storage
hydroelectricity. Engineers copied what had been built by Ontario
Hydro, across the river, when a similar system was built during
construction of the Sir Adam Beck generating station II in the 1950s.
This system allows energy to be stored in vast quantities. At night, the
potential energy in the diverted water is converted into electrical
energy in the Moses plant. Some of that electrical energy is used to
create potential energy when the water is pumped into the reservoir
behind the Lewiston Dam. During the day, part of the potential energy of
the water in the Lewiston reservoir is converted into electricity at the
Lewiston Dam, and then its remaining potential energy is captured by the
Moses Dam, which is also capturing the potential energy of the water
diverted from the river in real-time.
Regards
Simon Saba
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