Oh there definitely would be, but once again doing the sums, what you end up with is not only the cost of all the wind turbines, but the same cost doubled to provide the water turbines, plus the cost of the dam and the transmission lines WAY cheaper to dump the f****ng lot and stick in bog standard nukes.
Remember renewable energy is not an engineering choice: It was *imposed* by the EU, probably at the behest of German windpower companies.
We are not in the EU any more., We are not required to build a single windmill ever again, if Truss' troops have the courage to repeal the ghastly climate change act.
Oh silly us! Fancy not noticing that. So, for pumped storage, you not only have to have a lake up a hill that you can let down the hill, you also need an empty lake of the same size at the bottom, to hold the water coming down. So you can pump it back up. OK so that's two Welsh valleys rather than one, then.
Hmm, no wonder pumped storage is rather rare.
There are some lochs that connect to the sea though, aren't there?
What's a little environmental damage against making renewable energy work? Once pumped out, we could probably net Nessy and relocate her to Disneyland
The point about Loch Ness is that it contains more water than all the other lakes in the United kingdom put together, and all that water is needed up a 1000ft hill (or pumped out of 1000ft deep loch) to keep the UK going for just a *couple of weeks*. And remember, to do that it would need around 50GW of water turbines.
ArtStudents simply have no idea of just how f****ng ginourmous the energy requirements of a post industrial nation are, and how pathetic windmills are in comparison.
The point is that the great Lie of renewables is that the electricity they produce is as good as any other electricity and comes cost free.
It isn't.
When you still have to maintain and extend a conventional grid for the times when renewable energy simply doesn't turn up to work, it begs the question of what the point of the renewable energy is at all.
Popular Mechanics wrote about flywheel storage, many decades ago. And here is the concept, back again.
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I don't seem to be using exactly the right search terms, to get the old Popular Mechanics "flywheel powered lawn mower" to show up. As they proposed putting a flywheel in a mower, that would store enough kinetic energy to mow the entire lawn. The flywheel would spin at some material-science-limited speed like 100,000 RPM. And would be completely safe :-) Heh.
Nope. French routinely ramp their kit up and down. Ok its not too fast, and that's what Dinorwig is good for - firstly it can displace capacity by a few hours so that daytime charging covers the evening peak and secondly its a good emetrgency power station that can be online in seconds.
As I said. Dinorwig was pure cost benefit engineering. It was cheaper than an extra nuke.
The reason why we don't ramp nukes up and down, is again. less technical than economic. They cost a lot to build and they cost a lot to maintain. But they cost naff all to actually *run*. The opportunity cost of a nuke is about 0.5p a unit. So they will sell electricity right into baseload where market prices are around 4p a unit
Contrast with gas where the gas cost alone used to be about 4p a unit - and is now up to 10p-12p. They lose money if the electricity price dips below 9p.
So we use gas to cover peaks. And run nukes as baseload.
As gas prices rise, it makes sense to use more and more nukes to start to cover dispatched power.
Then if you look at hydro, the power is free, the capital cost is high, but the power is limited by rainfall.
That leads to hydro being carefully controlled to sell that precious rain into the highest possible priced market. That is the peak market.
But when it pisses with rain in Scotland, and the dams are thundering down the spillways, they will sell at whatever price they get, because water down spillways is lost income forever.
Nuke/gas/hydro is a good mix for the UK. Ideally if there were more hydro and nuclear we could use a lot less gas.
I think that is the way it has to go. If the Moggster gets his act together. At any given cost of capital, cost of nuclear and gas plant, and cost of gas, there is an optimal mix that varies as things like interest rates and gas costs fluctuate.
There is never any economic case for renewables *at all*. The only time wind makes sense is up to, and including, capacity of *pre-existent* hydro that is rain limited.
At around 27% capacity factor, that means you can add 27% extra energy to your hydro at relatively low cost.
If the wind drops, you run off pure hydro., If the wind blows, you save rainfall and run off wind.
It would also be small in diameter and very light.
My petrol mower stalls if I try and be too ambitious in what I cut. In which direction would the flywheel mower, and operator, fly when the same happens :)
I remember hearing a massive whine when I hitched a ride in Decca's Elizabethan at Farnborough air show ,as all the racks of radar kit in it sprang to life. "What's that?" "That's the rotary converter, runs of the aircraft 48V and powers all the mains voltage gear" "Why not use a transistor inverter" "cos the voltage drops to 28 when the wheels come up, but the rotary inverter stays spinning"
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