These are all good ideas that have been explored. However, turning an
idea into a practical solution to a problem involving megawatts of
power and billions of dollars takes a lot of time and capital, which
is not available. The issue is not the lack of ideas but the ability
to put them into practice on the scale required. In addition, each
good idea always has some down side that is not recognized until
serious efforts are made to put it into practice. For example,
hydrogen has to be stored. Either this requires power to cool it or
compress it into a smaller volume, or it requires expensive materials
to absorb it. While the cost of these storage methods will be paid
from the savings this storage gives, someone has to put up the
additional money to construct this extra machinery. They want their
money to give a return that is hard to achieve except over a long
period of time. To make matters worse, a hydrogen-air mixture is
explosive over a wide range of concentration, which makes use of
hydrogen more dangerous than natural gas, for example. All of the
proposed methods to store power created by wind and solar have similar
problems that must be solved before any significant storage is
possible. This takes time and money, which are in increasingly short
supply. If you want to make a contribution, analyze your ideas in
terms of cost/benefit ratio and show the result to someone who has
money.
Ed
On Jul 9, 2009, at 9:27 AM, Mauro Lacy wrote:
Edmund Storms wrote:
And thus we see the basic flaw in wind generation. Unless a backup
source of power is in place and can be connected to an active grid,
wind power is not practical.
You can use an intermediate stage as energy storage. Why not produce
Hidrogen with wind (and solar) power, and burn that hydrogen when wind
or solar is scarce? Not a backup, a buffer.
If you are concerned with the dangers and complications of Hidrogen
storage or transportation, you can use wind and/or solar to refine
Aluminium, and later burn that Al to produce Aluminium Oxide and
Hidrogen. Aluminium Oxide can be recicled indefinitely, and the
Hidrogen
and heat generated used to produce electric power.
Electric cars can be used to replace explosion cars, and Al can even
possibly be used as a fuel, with some modifications to actual
explosion
cars, by burning it and producing Hidrogen on demand, and burning the
Hidrogen in turn in the slighty modified explosion motor. I've made
the
calculations some years ago, and around 100 kgs of Aluminium were
equivalent in autonomy and power to a full tank of gasoline. In the
refuelling stations, a double process is necessary: getting rid of the
Aluminium oxide for recycling, and refuelling of the Al. Other light
metals(like Mg) can be more efficient than Al to store and transport
energy, but Al seems like a good candidate. If this is done massively,
the cost of energy can drop to almost zero after the initial
investment
is amortized.
Mauro
