Storing Wind Power In Cold Stores

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to Nature, a European-funded project has been launched to store electricity created from wind in refrigerated warehouses used to store food. As the production of wind energy is variable every day, it cannot easily be accommodated on the electrical grid. So the 'Night Wind' project wants to store wind energy produced at night in refrigerated warehouses and to release this energy during daytime peak hours. The first tests will be done in the Netherlands this year. And as the cold stores exist already, practically no extra cost should be incurred to store as much as 50,000 megawatt-hours of energy. Here are additional details and a picture illustrating this brilliant idea."

Comments

Roland Piquepaille

[suso]

Um, what the hell? This guy has a spot on ZDnet now? At least we know what he looks like.

April yet?

[flyingfsck]

Man, time flies. Refrigerating electricity - hmm, wonder how long it will last till it spoils?

Re:April yet?

[smartdreamer]

Maybe you are joking, but this as nothing to do with refrigerating electricity. It's about utilizing wind power to refrigirate during the night to be able to stop refrigirating during the day. Why? Because during the night, wind power over produce so it would be wasted! This is a simple idea but that can make a difference.

It reminds me about nuclear powerplants coupled with hydroelectricity. Nuclear power gives a constant output, but cannot be stopped shortly. So when they are overproducing, they pump water up transforming wasted energy in potential energy.

Re:April yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to know how we can harness the power created by the vast vacuum between people that grasp sarcasm and you.

Re:April yet?

[OldManAndTheC]

the power created by the vast vacuum between people that grasp sarcasm and you.

Note: the technical term for this controversial concept is zero-comphrension-of-the-point energy.

Holy Frozen Kippers

[The Dobber]

This has nothing to do with storing power, it's simply a transfer of usage from on-peak to off-peak.

Wow.

Re:Holy Frozen Kippers

[peterofoz]

I might have taken physics a long time ago, but we learned that you make things colder by removing energy. So there can be no such thing as cold energy storage. You can consider a cold store to be like a vacuum storage tank as it creates a difference in energy which like electricity creates potential to cause energy in the form of heat to flow. It does make sense, however, to offset energy consumption from peak hours by this method. I'd seen a design discussed in the late 70's at Orange Coast College (Calif) for chilling a cold-brine in storage tanks below office buildings, then cycling the air condiditon pipes and transferring heat from the building and warming the cold brine. They had put the whole campus on a energy management system, driven by the mainframe, and all written in APL.

Re:Holy Frozen Kippers

[Anonymous Coward]

I know Idaho Power has been doing this for at least a couple of years. They pay farmers to turn their irrigation wells off during peak periods. This is just a way to reduce demand during heavy usage.

http://www.idahopower.com/energycenter/energyeffic iency/Irrigation/irrigationPeakRewards.htm

Re:Holy Frozen Kippers

[caseih]

Well electricity is not about energy storage per se so much as it is about potential difference. With mere physics alone we can show that by cooling off something to many degrees below the ambient temperature (and if we could keep it there at no cost), then we can extract energy out again (out of the ambient air) because there is a difference in temperature. Thus you can extract electricity out of the freezer from a certain point of view. Energy flows usefully in either direction. This is related to the entire field of geothermal energy production, which works in the winter so long as you have a heat sump (the earth). Of course none of this might have much to do with the original article. It's hard to know as Roland's blog adverts are often short on real details and facts. And being slashdot I can't possibly read the original article.

"night wind"

[macadamia_harold]

So the 'Night Wind' project wants to store wind energy produced at night in refrigerated warehouses

So do they release this "Night Wind" with a "Dutch Oven"?

This can be used in many places

[Reverse Gear]

I think the post is a bit misleading, energy is not stored by cooling down something, actually energy is taken away, but never mind.

As far as I can figure what is being done is to cool down these refrigeration rooms more when there is more power beeing produced because of the strong wind and then you don't have to run the refrigeration systems when there is little wind for a time as they slowly heat until some level.

I would think that even more power could be saved if the energy was used to freeze water and the ice then was taken to melt in the a frame used as insulation for the freezing houses.

I don't see this as much of a new idea though, it is something that has been talked about a lot here in Denmark, there are many other places where the use of energy can be spared when there is lot's of production from windmills, for example local heating plants, smaller refrigerators in homes (would require some kind of online connection to tell them when there is cheap electricity, but I think these intelligent freezers already exist), electric cars, pretty much anything with an attached battery really.

This can to a large degree be controlled by letting the prices vary on the market and let the consumer feel these variances also, that way it pays of to use energy when there is plenty of it.

Using the power when it is produced sure is more efficient than using the extra energy to produce hydrogen, but still that is still something that I think should be still done. The two things doesn't oppose each other as such, if we are to bring down our CO2 release we sure need a lot of windmills.

Re:This can be used in many places

[Rich0]

Actually, you don't need anything quite as elaborate as what this article seems to describe. All you need is the ability for power companies to charge rates that vary in realtime based on supply/demand, and to allow customer to elect to use these rates instead of averaged-out ones.

I'm sure a lot of industrial processes work on the principle that they need to generate x quantity of some particular good in a 24 hour period, but the capacity in the plant is such that they can maybe run at less than full output for some of the day, and catch up at other times. The refrigeration in this article is just one example of this sort of thing.

If the rates varied in realtime you could design your industrial process to automatically tailor its power consumpation to the going rate. As a result you can save megabucks on your utility bill, and the utility in turn can save even more bucks on now-unneeded coal-fired plants.

The same would apply in residential situations - people could have their air conditioners fluctuate their setpoint based on the price of electricity within some limit. If during a particular hour of the day power is cheaper than average go ahead and drop the temperature an extra degree or two, and then coast through times of price-spiking. Instead of brining plants online and offline utilities would just vary the price of electricity throughout the day. If the fluctuations in price are large enough homeowners would probably buy solar-based systems or energy-storage systems of some kind (bigger water heaters that don't run during the day, storage tanks to hold cold water for cooling during the day, etc.).

Basically all you need is an electric meter with online access to the power company, and a way for power-consuming devices to find out the current rate. For cheaper devices a simple timer would at least cover general on/off-peak times.

Anything that encourages energy-users to be conscious of the realities of electrical supply/demand fluctuation will only help the environment, the supply of fuel, the general economy, etc. With the current system a kWh is a kWh and consumers have no incentive to shift their usage off-peak.

Re:This can be used in many places

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure how things are in America right now, but in Australia, they're rolling out a scheme called 'Time of Use'. Meters are automatically read every 30 minutes, or every 15 for large usage sites, and you're charged based upon the time that you use the energy. Currently it's split into 3 blocks.. Peak (business times) shoulder (evenings) and off-peak (nights, weekends) and differing rates are set for each period.

Energy Australia charge 22c/kwh for Peak, 8c/kwh for Shoulder and 4c/kwh for Off-peak.

Not as elaborate as your suggestion, but far more suitable for the average home user. It would probably benefit such 'cold stores' too, because I wouldn't imagine it would make much difference whether they're -20 or -40, so they could cool right down during the night, then use less energy during 'peak' hours. I would guess future developments might see small sites charging batteries during the night to power appliances through the day.

Re:This can be used in many places

[Rich0]

Adding user-feedback to a moderately unstable system like the electricity grid is not necessarily the best thing to do. Adding load-leveling capacity by storing power in the form of ice is a very, very good idea.

But in this case the load-leveling is being done by end-users. They just happen to be cooperating with the power company.

How would user-feedback make the system more unstable? Do you think that some users would set up their processes to INCREASE consumption when the price RISES? Users would either ignore the realtime rate, or they'd use it in a way that furthers the grid's goals - reducing usage when capacity is low, and raising it when capacity is high.

Right now utilities already do this in the form of on/off-peak metering. Generally only large industrial consumers are eligible (this varies greatly by country/region/etc). This is useful to save on gas-fired turbines and such, but as you point out wind is far less predictable - it might be more available at 1PM and less available at 1AM. To handle a grid with a lot of wind capacity you'd need realtime rates, and users who base their consumption on the realtime rates.

Regardless of the scheme you pick you need to make sure customers have incentive to cooperate. If you just tell them they're doing it for the common good they'll realize that they're going through a lot of trouble and possibly undertaking costs just to line utility executive pockets. If on the other hand you vary the rates in realtime, or give them breaks on their bills for participating they'll go along with it. Too often environmental initiatives are not reward-based, and as a result everybody pays them lip-service but silently undermines them. In most industries the greening-up of processes has not been the result of any desire to help out the environment, but rather large efficiency gains associated with recycling waste streams and reducing waste in general.

Why would he want to kill her in public?

[Dachannien]

store electricity created from wind in refrigerated warehouses

No, no, no.... There's no wind in these refrigerated warehouses. The point is that wind power fluctuates, so to smooth things out, this guy wants to use the electricity generated from wind power to overcool refrigerated warehouses at night, and then undercool them during the day when electricity demand peaks to make more of the electricity generated during the day available for other purposes.

Re:How to get rid of Roland Piquepaille...

[LiquidCoooled]

It can't work that well.
Afterall, you are posting in one of his articles.

alt fuels and systems

[drDugan]

Very nice. However, we're still just window dressing the Titanic.

500,000 years+ worth of stored energy in oil has been used in 200 years, and will be gone in another 200. Bummer. We found it, and used it. We have 6 billion people now (and growing fast) who want energy -- lots and lots of it.

All the alternative-fuels scenarios - even in the very best case where we grow vast oceans and fields of seaweed and switchgrass and use yeasts to process cellulosic 5-carbon sugars and make ethanol -- even in these best case scenarios (which incidentally would close the carbon loop), humans are still 1-2 orders of magnitude lower in energy production compared to the current oil-fueled system. If we add to that calculation efficiency measures we get closer, lower population - closer still, conservation - still closer... but: the harsh inescapable reality humanity faces in the next 30-50 years is this: there will just not be enough energy for the growing (first-world) population.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulosic_ethanol
http://bioconversion.blogspot.com/2006/08/celunols -wet-biomass-conversion.html

We need to perfect nuclear power engineering, software, and extremely long term storage processes as soon as possible.

Re:alt fuels and systems

[Grail]

That, or we need to wean ourselves off the high-energy-consumption habit.

Article and post misleading

[AaronW]

I think both the article and post are misleading. Basically all they are doing is turning down the temperature at night and letting it warm up during the day. This just means that most of their energy consumption occurs at night, when there is often a surplus of electricity. It's a great idea though. Many forms of power generation cannot quickly adjust their outputs due to the wear and tear it would cause by temperature changes. I.e. coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants usually run at one output level, resulting in a lot of extra energy available at night when demand is low.

This wouldn't be restricted to just wind power like the article says. It would also be very useful for many other power sources.

One other method I heard about many years ago was to use the extra energy at night to pump water to a high elevation resavoir and during the day use that water to help generate electricity.

Well, an old idea in new disguise ;-)

[The Terminator]

Well, this usage pattern resembles much the old idea of a pumped storage power plant (Pumpspeicherkraftwerk), a hydroelectric powerplant where the water, which is used in high load times to produce electric power, gets pumped back uphill to a reservoir by use of the excess power of the basic load power plants like coal or nuclear driven ones.
This is done for decades now in the european grid. I had the opportunity in the late sixties to visit such a power plant at Schruns/Tschagguns in Vorarlberg in Western Austria.
It's a very impressive installation with a entire delivery height of more than 2000m (6000ft) in two stages. In the exhibition is also an impressive display of the entire european powergrid.

CU

Roland the Plogger, wrong as usual. Real facts:

[Animats]

It's Roland the Plogger, wrong as usual, spamming to promote his blog. The Slashdot editors gave him two links this time, one without a "nofollow". Ka-ching!

OK, now the real info. Thermal energy storage has been around for years. There are thousands of installations. It's used when there's a big difference between day and night power rates. During the night, water is chilled, or ice frozen; during the day, the cold water is used for air conditioning. See Thermal Energy Storage Strategies for Commercial HVAC Systems for details on how to configure such a system. Also see CALMAC, which makes such gear. It was a spinoff from their ice-rink equipment business.

How many Can do this?

[JamesTRexx]

I think the question is also how many stores Can do this?
I work in the IT section for the biggest refrigeration company in the Netherlands, and from what I've seen every type of food has an specific storage temperature. Apparently a 2 degrees Celcius difference will make a big difference in the quality of food.

Expert reaction

[Portal1]

Hi I am running a company that implements a lot of software for most of the dutch electricity company's

There is a special communication protocol used to communicate between these electricity company's
It is called EDINE and is based on EDIEL which is again based on EDIFACT
One of these messages QUOTE-RRV is specifically used to trade over and under production.
But is also used to trade possibility to not consume for a certain time.
Which effectively lowers the demand for a period of scarcity

This is used a lot in aluminum factory's that can effectively shut down for a day when there is a problem in a power plant
Of course if the same can be done for cold stores that is great.

Most of those company's are very wanted by electricity company's and they normally have very lucrative contracts
almost getting there electricity for free.

Hydrogen plants would be also very good candidates

Greets John

Re:Stupid idea

[hcdejong]

RTFA. They're not storing energy as heat and then attempting to recover it, they're modulating the energy usage of the cold store to buffer the grid. Cool down the store to -25 C during peak supply hours (which often don't coincide with peak demand), and you can switch off the refrigerator and let the temperature rise to -23 C during off-peak supply hours. This is beneficial regardless of whether the grid is powered by wind, solar or fossil fuel plants; wind power is just the sales pitch.

Re:This doesn't matter with regard to wind power.

[jonbryce]

Yes, they can do this without using wind power, and they probably do. That isn't the point though.

The point is that the output of a wind generator is pretty erratic and unpredictable, and this limits the % of total electricity that this source can supply.

If you have a power input that can take an erratic and unpredictable electricity supply and still function effectively, then this increases the % of electricity that can be supplied by wind turbines.

Re:This doesn't matter with regard to wind power.

[maxume]

Except that there might be wind power available in the middle of the night that is currently getting pissed away into the ether. There isn't really any other power source that happens to have excess capacity available in the middle of the night; wind is generally built as 'peak' capacity, because it might not be there once in a while. This system highlights a way of making sure that the energy gets used when it is available(it is good for the power company to simply 'give' the power to the cold houses, as it reduces daytime demand in a predictable fashion).