The Oil Drum: Europe

101 comments on ASPO-USA: Support for Global Energy Flow modelling and a Net Energy database

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Euan Mearns on November 2, 2006 - 1:42pm

our task is to move the renewable blue boxes upward, using technology and the depleting blue boxes, while gradually moving the red boxes downward

Nate, I think this is the diagram that Cutler said he didn't fully understand at ASPO. And I'm not sure what it means either - if anything. I suspect the proximity of spatial area of current fuel sources with our urban / industrial infrastructure may just be a coincidence. Like wise, is it really a problem that renewable energy sources are spatially "less dense" at point of harvesting?

Having said that, it is worth noting the position of Hydro - is that the size of the lake or the catchment area that is plotted. One thing for sure, we couldn't power ourselves just on Hydro in the UK - just not enough height and gradient.

WRT to wind (shoot me now) I guess the question is how many turbines do you need - and what area would be required to host these - is there enough space? Certainly should be if the off shore is used. But I know that there is problem in west Denmark with the intrusion of turbines.

In terms of upgrading wind power (shoot me again) I see that as strategies for delivering a stable grid - balancing and storage - and we need expert electrical engineering input to answer that.

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Nick on November 2, 2006 - 2:21pm

Reactive power is not a major problem. Intermittency is, but it's solvable with a host of solutions, not least of which is geographical dispersion and interconnection of grids. We should keep in mind how early we are in the development of wind, and how small and isolated are some of the grids that use wind: Denmark isn't even interconnected between the eastern part of the country (where the wind is) and the west!! We should also remember how much better is the wind resource in the US and UK compared to Europe: capacity factors are very low in Denmark and Germany, but they make it work anyway because they're really determined. Nevertheless, when German system operators complain, that's why.

We should remember the very low cost of pumped storage: only .6 cents per kwhr. Why wasn't this used before? Because natural gas was so cheap, and worked so well for handling intermittent/peak loads. Nat gas has only been recognized as expensive and limited for a very, very short time.

Anyway, here is some real data. From the IEA:

http://www.iea.org/textbase/papers/2005/variability.pdf

From an actual electrical engineering journal (requires registration):

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may06/3544/3

a serious study in Ireland:

http://www.sei.ie/index.asp?locID=330&docID=-1

and from a technical working group of actual power engineers:

http://www.uwig.org/IntegrationStateoftheArt.htm