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Lichtblick and Volkswagen To Build 'Swarm' Power Plants
Dr. Hok writes "As more and more renewable energy enters the grid, it gets increasingly difficult to match supply and demand 24/7. The answer of German power company Lichtblick and Volkswagen is a swarm of 100,000 flexible base-load generators. These fridge-sized CHP (Combined Heat and Power) generators that will be installed in people's basements in Hamburg starting early next year will feed electricity into the grid and the waste heat into their home's water/heating. The "ZuhauseKraftwerk" (HomePowerPlant) features a vanilla VW Golf natural-gas engine that generates 20kW electrical and 34 kW heat with an efficiency of 92%. The units are remotely controlled via a mobile network or DSL; they can ramp up in a minute if needed. A water tank ensures that heat is continuously available, while electricity is produced on demand. The swarm will replace two nuclear plants, they say. And your old oil heating needed replacement anyway."
Germany and Spain allow nice allowances for those that produce the power at home. For example, the price paid for residences in grid-tie solar systems is $.60 per KWH in Germany ("Solar is only economic for installation on rooftops because of the feed-in tariffs for solar electricity of 60 cents per kWh". http://www.edn.com/article/CA6432171.html )
Note that Germany is doing this even though solar is much less efficient there. Germany is located at ~ 51' N latitude . For reference, Great Falls, MT is at ~ 47' N Latitude.
If the US tariffed-in rates were set at even $.38 per KWH, solar would be a no-brainer investment for majority of homes in the US and coal and natural gas generation would die a natural death with no power infrastructure upgrade needed.
As a side note, the price of natural gas sets the world price for Ammonium nitrate - a product which uses natural gas as a major catalyst to produce. Therefore the price of Natural Gas has a great impact on the cost of food for most of the world. ( http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/icm/2003/4-14-2003/natgasn.html ).
That is to say: the electricity we use that is generated by natural gas, increases the price we pay for food-stuffs here and in the rest of the world.
Well,
you could use math...
If 20kW+34kW is 92%, then the total input energy is 58.7kW, therefore the electric efficiency is approximately 34%.
However, natural gas boilers for heating and warm water are very common in Germany, so replacing some (and 100000 is "some") of them with units that can also generate electricity is not such a bad idea.
Cheers,
Sirius
Yes it can be that efficient.
You are right about the electric efficiency which is of cause bad. But what happens to the waste energy? All the rest is heat is stored in a big water tank for your home warm water. Only 8% of the energy escapes that system and will leave your chimney.
How do I uncompress my MD5 archive?
In 1973 FIAT (the italian car company) put on the market this device (sorry guys, but it is in italian). There are still some cogenerators working around there, but from a commercial point of view it was near a failure. It will be interesting to see what happens to WV generator.
The point is that nuclear plants can't be shut of in a few minutes (coal plants neither) and waters storing plants are not flexible enough. Because of that many windmills and water dams are shut of even thou they could produce green energy. So what it really means is that this technology will allow real green technology to run when ever it can.
Just a statistics i remember (i can not cite it anymore thou) is that about 40% of green energy is wasted because the electric grid couldn't handle it.
How do I uncompress my MD5 archive?
For heat generation only, 92% efficiency can be achieved using a secondary heat exchanger which extracts heat from the flue gas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensing_boiler
The quote is a little misleading. They are not planning to shut down 2 power plants when the swarm comes online. They are simply stating that it will generate power equivalent to two average nuclear power plants.
Different story: Technically it might actually replace those plants, because the government decided in 2000 that all nuclear power plants will be shut down until ~2019. But we have elections coming up and it's possible that this decision gets revoked.
I don't read replies by ACs.
I live nextdoor to Germany, in the Netherlands, and here airconditioning in homes is not very common. I assume it's the same in Germany.
It can be hot, of course, but never for very long. "Airco" is considered to be a luxery. And hot water is still needed in the summer.
Just be sure not to install such a system near your carefully stored wines in the cellar.
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!
Very few homes in (North-)Western Europe have air conditioning, and the warm water tank would obviously not be placed in your living room. Average summer temperatures are between 20 and 30 degrees Celcius. And while the system would probably be overall less efficient in summer than in winter, you will still need some warm water anyway to do the dishes, to clean, to take showers, etc. There are also washing machines and dish washers nowadays that can take warm water as "input" rather than cold water that is subsequently heated using electricity.
Donate free food here
Here come the chemistry Nazis: natural gas is a reactant, not a catalyst, and not to produce ammonium nitrate. It is used to produce hydrogen, which is then combined with nitrogen to get ammonia, with which you actually get the ammonium nitrate when you combine it with nitric acid.
Though you're right that the price of NG has a large influence on that of ammonium nitrate.
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Is that why we here in AR have wildcatters coming out our wazoos? In less than 2 years we have had more than a half dozen natural gas wildcatters popping up all over town, and we are just a little speck on the map so they must be all over the place. I figured the price of natural gas wasn't high enough to explain all the rigs popping up everywhere, but if it is as you say and the natural gas is required for food production that makes a lot more sense.
Because everyone here has known for decades there was natural gas all over the place, just nobody bothered because the price of gas was so cheap. hell in the days of family wells out local fire dept was getting called out all the time because somebodies pump kicked on and the natural gas blew the well house sky high. I was wondering why all of a sudden we have natural gas companies building like mad here, and can't hardly move for all the semis carrying gas production equipment. A tie in with food production makes a lot more sense as to why we have suddenly become a boom town. Thanks for the info.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
With all due respect, nothing on the wikipedia page you cite actually supports the argument that we're going to run out of uranium any time in the near future. Did you just put up a link and assume that no one would read it? "Uranium depletion is the result of extracting and consuming uranium, a finite resource. However, uranium resources may never be fully depleted as the economically-recoverable reserves (including those in seawater) may be effectively inexhaustible." (opening statement) And remember that the sky-is-falling crowd have, for the last 40 years, been claiming that we only have 40 years left of oil. IOW, knock it off with the FUD.
Thats exactly what they want to do. "Lichtblick" is basicly a energy company selling renewable energy. They simply found out that if you want to sell lots of solar energy, you better should have a backup for ..say.. nighttime. Espescially nights that aren't windy...
bickerdyke
What about during summer? Or are German summers much cooler than they are in the Mid-Atlantic states of the USA?
How efficient will it be to run the gas generator, using the waste heat on your hot water heater, then crank up the air conditioner when it gets too hot?
Summers are much cooler in NW Europe than in the Mid East Coast states. Like 30F cooler on average. Because of that difference of climate, AC is really not common in homes (those that have it probably do so for its dehumidifying properties FWIW) and peak power demand comes in the winter.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
You should buy stocks in the ones that make white paint. Painting roofs white to increase their albedo is a perfectly valid geoengineering technique.
Nuclear power is inherently dangerous, we do not know how to deal with the waste, the nuclear fossil fuel will last only a couple of decades, and huge power plants are as inefficient as it gets because of the long distances electricity is transported. By contrast, distributed generation of electricity as proposed by the article is much more efficient, because it happens very close to the consumer.
There are already passively safe reactor designs available to be built, most of the waste that will ever be produced has already been produced as modern reactors produce far less, and where did you get the idea that there are only a couple of decades of fuel left? More like a hundred years with current technologies and billions of years if breeder reactors are used: http://www.nea.fr/html/general/press/2008/2008-02.html
"Had we invested a fraction of the research funding that we have given to nuclear power industries into renewable energy research, we would probably already have most of our energy from renewalbe sources. "
the fact is we HAVEN'T invested in nuclear at all for about 20 years,beyond keeping existing reactors going. and how do you come to the conslusion we could make solar/wind/wave able to provide a constant load?!?! is any amount of research going to make the sun shine and the wind blow on queue?!
"Nuclear power is inherently dangerous, we do not know how to deal with the waste, the nuclear fossil fuel will last only a couple of decades" - bull-fucking-shit! the nuclear industry has a saftey record 2nd to none for a start. then consider modern reactors have passive saftey masures making a meltdown impossible.
and i've also heard this argument that uranium fuel will run out in 50 years. yes, present STOCKS will run out if we don't dig up anymore, or look for/develope new deposits. i know for a fact (i work in resources) australia has MASSIVE reserves of uranium, which could provide fuel to the world for easily 500 years at present rates. then there are breeder reactors, which can extend the life of fuel rods 50x, at which point you end up with either a low rad material which isn't dangerous or a highly active material which has a 1/2 life of 200 years - easily containable.
but i know you won't listen to reason, you've been spoon fed this nonsense for years. i'll just wait for your lights to go out.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
He made an error in wording(said catalyst, should have said feedstock); but his intended point stands. Ammonium nitrate is typically made from ammonia and nitric acid; and ammonia is, these days, typically made from natural gas or petroleum gases.
Have you looked at the DESERTEC concept at all? It answers a lot of the issues you are raising with solar energy. True, it is visionary, but it is also backed by several studies and major institutions.
but i know you won't listen to reason, you've been spoon fed this nonsense for years. i'll just wait for your lights to go out.
Where is the "reason" you are offering? I could argue the same "spoon feeding" for your argumentation ("nuclear power is save"). Maybe we Europeans are more careful with such statements, being closer to Chernobyl. Even though I am thousands of kilometers away, it is still recommended to not eat mushrooms more than a couple of times a year, and I want a better future for my own children.
Regarding research spendings I could quickly find this resource, which has a really amazing chart: http://www.solarpowerrocks.com/solar-trends/a-sick-graph-iraq-war-spending-vs-spending-on-renewable-energy/, showing that US research spendings on solar energy are still only half of those on nuclear energy despite the fact that you claim that there is essentially no research on nuclear energy! ; figures are from National Council for Science and the Environment.
If Germany were to go 100% nuclear, who's left in Europe to buy their power?
Well, we would over here in Wales where we have at least one storage system that pumps water up to the top of a mountain using cheap power and generates electricity via a hydroelectric dam when the demand is high. This kind of system smooths out demand spikes because it can be turned on and off very quickly. Given the amount that it rains in Wales, the same system also generates some power for free by impeding the rainfall on its way to the sea.
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What do you do with the toxic waste?
Store it, reprocess it, burn it in a breeder, use alternative methods to get it so it degrades faster, like other posters have mentioned.
Besides, radioactive waste isn't having a real effect on the environment because it's contained, unlike the chemical and radiological pollution coal plants release.
Going after salt flats is missing our point, because I haven't ever heard of a pro-nuclear power slashdotter propose using them for long term storage. The proposals are almost universally reprocess/breeder/netron flux with diversions into burying it in subduction zones.
Another option are fusion power plant. The research did alot of improvement during the last few years and the radio active waste has got a half-life of only a few years not really worth mentioning.
We have functioning fission plants now, the biggest fusion test reactor being built/proposed is going to cost a couple times that of a good sized fission plant and still has absolutely no provisions for actually producing electricity.
I don't read AC A human right
I don't see why you're looking at Denmark. They've never had any commercial nuclear reactors and the only experimental one in Risø was shut down a few years ago.
Now, is it stupid that they are using that much coal power? Yes, that it is, but on the other hand they are also one of the leading nations when it comes to adopting renewable energy sources, like wind power, although the growth of windmill farms pretty much died when the current government came into office.
See, gas is cheap as hell right now; so rights to drill for gas are cheaper than hell. It costs so little to get into a gas producing position right now as a wildcatter (~$10k for a 90ft spec well in KS, last I checked) that the eventual rise in gas prices when the economy recovers will make a three-well wildcatter a squillionaire.
Nuclear power IS safe, at least by any reasonable use of the term. Thing is, if you scale up Nuclear power to the same electricity production as coal, even if you include a Chernobyl every year, it'd still kill fewer people than Coal does. The statistics DON'T point to a Chernobyl level event every year - at this point you're looking more at a greater than 50 year interval between them, and every year of safe operation without another disaster extends that.
Even though I am thousands of kilometers away, it is still recommended to not eat mushrooms more than a couple of times a year, and I want a better future for my own children.
Are you sure that recommendation is based on good science? Or is it like the Vaccine scare here in the USA about Thermisol? That has parents not vaccinating their kids even with thermisol free vaccines.
showing that US research spendings on solar energy are still only half of those on nuclear energy despite the fact that you claim that there is essentially no research on nuclear energy! ; figures are from National Council for Science and the Environment.
Given that Nuclear power provides ~20% of our power, sure, there's R&D with it, but most of that's gone to increasing power production capabilities at existing nuke plants, not for building new ones. I'd also note that wind isn't listed - which might put wind/solar over nuclear in research investments(might be why they don't list it), but still under the R&D investments for COAL.
While on this topic, I'll point out that I'm for a rough power production plan of 35% nuclear, 20% solar, 20% wind, 20% hydro, 5% other.
Given that I've considered installed a combined cycle generator in my basement*, I'm not hostile to Lichtblick's plan. I'd power it with propane though, as that's what I have access to. It can be very efficient as well - an electrical power only plant is lucky to reach 50%, most are closer to 30%. The rest is waste heat. If you're using the combined cycle to also utilize the heat that would otherwise be waste, bonus.
*Normally you don't want the generator in the house, but it is perfectly safe if you take the right steps and properly duct the exhaust to OUTSIDE the building, and in my case I'd be ducting the air in as well.
I don't read AC A human right
It's actually pretty neat - you can build a refridgerator that has no moving parts, mearly piping and a heat source. They're known as Absorbtion Chillers. Though after a certain point it is more efficient to have some pumps. Some RV's have these, the heat source is a propane burner. It's more efficient than trying to run a generator(~20% efficient at that size) all the time to keep your food(or medicine) cold when you're not otherwise using electricity. They take a 9V or some other configuration of standard batteries to run the thermostat and fridge light.
They've even done this to provide a building with AC.
The only problem with using solar is that you generally need steam, not mere hot water, for the chillers to work well. this can be done with solar - but you need more complicated solar collectors to concentrate the solar enough to actually boil the water. - rather than a simple panel that you drain water through, you need pipes with curved mirror surfaces(polished metal works well enough though) reflecting more sunlight onto the pipe.
I don't read AC A human right
consider modern reactors have passive saftey masures making a meltdown impossible.
I'll add to this that passive security measures don't mean "nobody needs to take action to turn off the reactor", or even "no computer is needed to shut the reactor down". Passive safety means "this reactor cannot undergo a meltdown because it is physically impossible". Just like you can't walk through walls or damage tank armor by throwing eggs at it, passively safe reactors cannot melt because the laws of physics say so.
nuclear fossil fuel
This GP nugget is funny. What fossilized into uranium? Fire-breathing radioactive dragons?
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Well, that would explain why they are setting up the wells, but NOT why they are actually bottling and shipping the stuff off. There is an NG compression and bottling site just down the road from me, and from the looks of things they are running tanks and lines like crazy to bottle and ship the stuff as fast as they can. Plus at noon you can't move down the main drag for all the gas trucks hauling it out to the freeway, so somebody has to be paying good money for this stuff RIGHT NOW, or they wouldn't be bottling and hauling it, just drilling and capping.
I'm not gonna complain though, as while we weren't really nailed hard by the recession, now we are starting to boom, thanks to all the wildcatter cash flowing in. My engineer buddy down the hall has been swamped making scale models of their production facilities, and if I cared to advertise more I would be buried alive, but I already have more work than I can handle now. So they had to have found something profitable to do with all that gas, because they certainly are moving it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.