Comments on: Is wind power reliable? – An authoritative article from David Millborrow who is technically experienced and numerate, unlike many other commentators

By: The cost of wind, the price of wind, the value of wind | Climate Vine

The cost of wind, the price of wind, the value of wind | Climate Vine — Wed, 06 May 2009 10:40:12 +0000

[...] contrasting views on this topic, you can read these two articles: Wind is reliable and Critique of wind integration into the grid on [...]

By: admin

admin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:43:54 +0000

I hope you do not mind but I have tried to post (not sure if I have been successful) the attached on the Claverton web site.

It is a commentary on your article “Is wind reliable”

Please feel free to rubbish what I say

Regards

Denis Stephens
………………………..
Dennis –

I’ve loaded this article into the file area ( I wish others would learn how to do this and help me out by the way)

http://www.claverton-energy.com/download/319/

(You can look at all the wind files by going to LIBRARY / DOWNLOADING FILES and clicking on wind)

I’ve then put the link as a comkment on the main article by David M

Best

Admin

By: admin

admin — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 19:14:37 +0000

Tend to agree with you.
Pumped storage is pretty useless though, as it is very expensive and Dinorwig can only deliver about 2 GW for about 4 hours or so no good at all for long term storage, or long term excess.

Quite agree electrolysis to hydrogen is one option, but hydrogen is a quite useless vehicle fuel due to the inability to get enough of the stuff into a vehicle.
http://www.claverton-energy.com/download/167/

http://www.claverton-energy.com/download/159/

Much better to use ammonia, which is not, as ill informed people suppose, any more dangerous to transport than petrol, and can be readily used in existing engines, and you can get enough of the stuff into vehicles.

Batteries are of course another option and twice as efficient as either hudrogen or ammonia, but don’t yet exist with sufficient range or cheapness, and have huge environmental impacts – like where are you going to get all the lithium from?

Much better to go to electric trains, and electricity trams which can use the stuff directly, and travel at 70 mph (in 1935) with overhead pole pick up.

Have you got any articles we can publish?

By: Bill Powell

Bill Powell — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 10:45:36 +0000

The bigger question is wha to do with wind energy at times of off-peak demand.
The answer must be storage. The classic is pumped storage. ‘Ripple Control’ aka ’smart metering’ can store off-peak energy as heat (or cold) at the consumer.
ITM Power offer hydrogen storage there. They reason that the wires are dimensioned to cope with peak demand all the way to the 13 A socket. (Actually there is some averaging on the ring main and as you get further from the consumer.)
Therefore hydrogen could be generated at the consumer much of the time making it possible to use the available wind energy nearly all the time, thereby saving fuel.
It might be even more cost effective to generate the hydrogen at the windfarm because according to Ing Tetzlaff the cost of electrical infrastructure is at least 10x that of gas.