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Alternative Energy Production - Tidal / Wave etc.


mgb2010
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My advice is to take charge of you own destiny and cough up enough money to get GENTEC venturi appraised by a truly independent assessor -I, for my part, will issue £1.00 shares to match each individual's contribution to the 'Get GENTEC venturi to Shetland Fund' SIC will eventually follow your lead.

A few days ago you said you were going to give your design away for nothing to somebody else, and that Shetland had missed its chance. What made you change your mind ?

 

My conscience will not let me see Shetland destroyed by idiots!

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The plain fact of the matter is that this simple invention has been missed by the academics by assuming that converting shaft work to heat and back to shaft work is less efficient and as a consequence of that incontovertible fact that the resulting power out will obviously be less. Yes, we can all see the logic of that assumption but I actually did the sums and found out that the converse is true, you get about 7 times more out, when you need it, because I am storing 14 times more energy than conventional 'idiot driven' schemes can deliver, intermittently,

 

I see why you want to store energy, but it must be more efficient to produce electricity from the primary mechanism, rather than going through the complexities of the following steps you have included in GV. The tide is always running SOMEWHERE, it is never slack everywhere at once, so with generating barges in several locations constant production of electricity is possible. This leaves Springs/neaps, but use the number of barges required for neaps - just turn off a few when the spring tides are running!

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crofter said

 

"I see why you want to store energy, but it must be more efficient to produce electricity from the primary mechanism, rather than going through the complexities of the following steps you have included in GV"

 

Yes, you would think that producing electricity from the primary mechanism would be more efficient but in this case it is not. Every propeller in the water whether it is capturing or putting power into the water has a 'sweet spot' where the transfer is at its most efficient. Ships at sea call this their economical speed. Academics refer to it as tip speed ratio. My system has 'sweet spots' right across the velocity spectrum and can capture power close to Betz's limit. This has never been achieved before and I am not about to tell anybody how I do that any time soon.

 

Be that as it may, leaving out sweet spots, by generating electricity directly from a varying tidal regime is fraught with difficulty; you have to maintain frequency by spilling a LOT of power from the variable pitch blades and you can only generate at full capacity for about an hour and a half each side of the tide's zenith during Springs. During Neaps even in the very high tidal stream locations you would be lucky to generate at full capacity (at the correct frequency) for more than half an hour both sides of the tides' zeniths during the lunar month's nadirs.

 

 

http://www.greenheating.com/Resources/Image25.gif

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Greenheatman, I'm afraid I still want a clarification about something...

 

The basics of your invention are not too complicated, and based on already existing technology: superheated water turns seawater to steam and drives a steam turbine. Fine! Not massively efficient but plausible.

 

But where does the power to superheat the water come from?

 

You need the steam turbine to create the power, but the steam turbine can't work without the superheated water, which needs power to be heated. Hmmm...

 

Okay, once the turbine is working then presumably you can use that power to go back into reheating the water (making it even less efficient presumably). But am I right in thinking that this machine, like the windmills you hate so much, will also require a kickstart from the grid to heat the water initially?

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Greenheatman, I'm afraid I still want a clarification about something...

 

But where does the power to superheat the water come from?

 

 

The kinetic energy in the tide converted to thermal energy. This is exactly the same as geothermal except that the water is heated to specific temperature, and maintained around that temperature, by tidal stream and not by radioactive decay in rock formations over the aeons.

 

None of the electricity generated is used to heat water in the system - all electricity goes onto the national grid.

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But what kind of machine are you using to convert the tide to heat? I don't think you've specified that - it would seem fairly important.

 

Also, what is used to power to pump to take the seawater through to the tank?

 

Windmills under the sea type devices similar to Lunar Energy's but not nearly as big in size. Previous graphs show that almost all the power under the 'hump' is coverted to thermal power MWh(thermal) whilst the LE device may generate around 7MWh(e) for the grid.

 

http://www.lunarenergy.co.uk/productOverview.htm

 

.........but these unimaginative devices only work when the tide is running and will generate 7 times less electricity than GV

 

 

Electricity drives the feedwater pump but a small diesel generator will be required to get the system going. It will only be needed once.

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Greenheatman,

 

you don't really need that gennie to get the system started do you? you're going to use the tide to turn your blades, so no external power needed there; and you'll use a battery for your DC excitation for the alternator, won't you?

 

Why are you 'spilling' power from the shaft to maintain the shaft frequency? Why don't you use frequency controlled dump loads to use that (otherwise wasted) power to heat your feed system? That would be better wouldn't it?

 

What made you change your mind about using the Gentec to produce hydrogen? The lads at PURE told me that their hydrogen plant is in the 90's of percentage efficiency - a sight more than steam eh?!

 

What type of element will you be using to superheat the steam? Is there already a suitable design on the market?

 

What type of boiler are you proposing to use? I would be very interested to know about this as my experience is limited to oil fired boilers.

 

I look forward to your reply to these points.

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The tide is always running SOMEWHERE, it is never slack everywhere at once, so with generating barges in several locations constant production of electricity is possible. This leaves Springs/neaps, but use the number of barges required for neaps - just turn off a few when the spring tides are running!

 

Absolutely agreed!

 

Do we need this kind of sophisticated technology? Do we need a thermal accumulator at all? – In a place like Shetland?!?

 

i) Strathclyde University has shown (so far in theory only) that a system "fired" with tidal energy from around the Scottish coast could work effectively and efficiently using just one pumped storage hydro plant (that at Ben Cruachan) to fill the nationwide gaps in generation/demand.

 

ii) Up to now we have talked about tide, ebb, and a more or less long lasting standstill in between. Is this really the right assumtion? Look at Mavis Grind: There is a difference in the tide of about two hours or so between the west and the east coast, if I remember it right.

 

In other words: There are always some kind of usable currents around Shetland!

The only thing you would need is a "Shetland Power LAN"

- to feed an otherwise conventional thermal power plant

- from different tidal energy generators to the state-of-the-art

- in different places around Shetland

- at different times of a day.

 

And yes, you would need something like a switch … ;-) … again no glamour of modern engeneering!

 

In other words: There is "abundance" of energy in the waters around Shetland - So, why sophisticating about how to maximise the efficiency???

 

With all that "lateral thinking" - Why not trying a different approach and look at the whole problem as a "kind of a logistic" problem?

 

- How much output do I need to serve the islands/market?

- What's the minimum output per generator now available on the market?

- How much generators do I need to cover the demand?

- Where are the optimal tide and ebb currents around Shetland to place my devices?

- How to combine the whole set of devices and how to integrate them into one network to deliver the primary energy from all the turbines to one power plant - used as buffer before the net only - all day all year round?

 

At spring tide switch of to avoid overfeeding the net - for the lowest neap tide a set of X as a reserve to guarantee minimum input - that's it.

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Greenheatman,

 

 

Why are you 'spilling' power from the shaft to maintain the shaft frequency? Why don't you use frequency controlled dump loads to use that (otherwise wasted) power to heat your feed system? That would be better wouldn't it?

 

.

 

The conventional idiot driven schemes that are SPILLING a lot of power from their variable pitch blades to maintain fequency and voltage D'oh

 

Perhaps if you tried reading one word at a time it may help instead of 'speed reading' my explanations

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Greenheatman,

 

 

What made you change your mind about using the Gentec to produce hydrogen? The lads at PURE told me that their hydrogen plant is in the 90's of percentage efficiency - a sight more than steam eh?!

 

What type of boiler are you proposing to use? I would be very interested to know about this as my experience is limited to oil fired boilers.

 

I look forward to your reply to these points.

 

Yes but the overall electricity to hydrogen and back to usable electricity overall system efficiency is less than 15%

 

There is no 'boiler' the thermal accumulator replaces the 'boiler'

 

This is hard work!

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Do we need this kind of sophisticated technology? Do we need a thermal accumulator at all? – In a place like Shetland?!?

 

i) Strathclyde University has shown (so far in theory only) that a system "fired" with tidal energy from around the Scottish coast could work effectively and efficiently using just one pumped storage hydro plant (that at Ben Cruachan) to fill the nationwide gaps in generation/demand.

quote]

 

Yes, there is always a tide running somewhere - go ahead and put in conventional simplistic turbines around the coast so that you are always generating dribbles of electricity somewhere - but GENTEC venturi will provide at least 7 times more electicity at full capacity 24/7

 

The tide will need to be 3hours and about 12minutes out of phase between coasts for this harebrained and unimaginative scheme to work at all - guess what? It is not.

 

Pumped storage has an overall efficiency of 30% at best.

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This is hard work!

Is it?

Why not KISS - Keeping It Simply Stupid!?

 

Again:

Do we really need a sophisticated technology to squeeze the last Kwh out of the ocean before we can start?

 

Man inventing the wheel did not start with that little thing we call a spoke today - but he was successful!!!

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