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Renewable Energy World Editors
January 21, 2013
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As the U.S. progresses inch-by-inch to get a single offshore wind turbine constructed, Belgium announced that it plans to construct an island for the sole purpose of storing its vast amounts wind energy. According to reports, this is part of Belgium's plan to wean itself off of nuclear energy by 2025, which as of 2011 accounts for more than half of its energy production.
Government officials are confident that the island will solve intermittency issues that commonly occur in renewable energy production, such as wind and solar. The island will use a pumped-hydro system to store excess wind energy generated during off-peak hours, which will then be used to help satisfy the demand during hours when the wind isn’t blowing.
The three-kilometer island -- shaped like a horseshoe with a vast, deep reservoir located in the center -- is to be located three to four kilometers off the coast near the province of West Flanders. When the wind is strongest, typically at night, water will be pumped out of the reservoir through turbines and into the sea. When energy demand is high, the water will be let back into the reservoir through the same turbines.
"We have a lot of energy from the windmills and sometimes it just gets lost because there isn't enough demand for the electricity," said a spokeswoman for Belgium's North Sea minister Johan Vande Lanotte to Reuters. Vande Lanotte revealed the plans last week during a presentation at the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.
Belgium has just over 1 GW of wind capacity as of 2011, which accounts for about 2.9 percent of its electricity consumption, according to a European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) report. Belgium hopes to eventually establish 2,300 MW of wind capacity from its North Sea wind farms alone, which can help replace one of its two 3,000-MW nuclear plants.
The project is expected to take anywhere between five to seven years to complete, and is dependent on the utility to stregthen the grid transmission system leading inland from the coast, according to Reuters. Vande Lanotte did not specify the costs of the project during his presentation, but said that he hopes to offset costs by selling excess power to other countries. He also said that countries, such as the U.K., would be able to directly connect to the undersea transmission if they choose, according to reports.
Lead image via APZI
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February 26, 2013
The problem we have is twofold: a) the Carbon Cycle has been trashed for so long we cannot correct it for thousand years or so, even if we stopped all combustion at this moment; and b) the key parameters for any energy source are relative lifetime emissions and energy density.
If we examine all power sources & compare emissions & energy per unit area, volume, etc., we can make wise decisions.
On these scores, local solar has an effective power density near infinity, since no land is consumed for installations, but some land is used for materials & some emissions occur in the systems' life cycles.
The next best source is nuclear fusion, but we don't yet know how to do it, despite knowing it is as 'renewable' as the sun, depending on our future power demands.
The next best choice is nuclear fission, which has 1/100 the energy density of fusion, but about 1,000,000 times the energy density of our present fossil fuels, & it requires no additional fuel component -- combustion fuels need an oxidizer (Oxygen...). That last detail is something our present 'energy' companies fail to mention. Wonder why? NASA has to pay for its oxidizers!
At this level, the big step down from nuclear to anything else shows why nuclear power has always been recognized as our long-term, constant-power base. Make a fist & hold it up. That fist, if Uranium, will run all of NY City for an hour.
A coal 'fist' is many full, 100-ton rail cars straight from a coal mine. Then there are the emissions & the ash. Interestingly, coal ash is not only poisonous (arsenic...) but radioactive (Radium, Uranium...), because it naturally comes from deposits containing rock. And rock has all manner of elements contained. This is why our combustion plants have long been granted NORM Exemptions -- otherwise, they could not operate.
You can find a coal plant with a Geiger counter, but not a nuke.