To round off our erudite session on flywheels: BTL on the previous post, one of our anons offered us this little Irish video for our edification.
It contains that oft-heard and seductive phrase "basically free energy", upon which we are told Ireland will build Europe's biggest hydrogen economy. (Hang on a minute, hasn't German already discovered basically free energy?)
Well, the voice-over has a pleasant manner. And we do get to learn about a grid-scale flywheel in action, if nothing else. A moderately entertaining quarter-hour of your time.
ND
5 comments:
There're two sorts of Free Energy in thermodynamics: yer Gibbs Free Energy and yer Helmholtz Free Energy.
But neither implies that energy ever comes free.
I do apologise for intruding science into a discussion of the World of Ed.
With a little tweak.
“If you think health care/green energy is expensive now, just wait 'til it's free.”
P. J. O'Rourke
That guy kissed the Blarney Stone alright.
All sounds very fine until you ask how much will this cost. We make windmills and keep up the maintenance as they start and continue to wear out. We build electrolysers and pumps and pipelines and storage tanks and chill the gas to -253C and keep them going.
We then ship to Milford Haven - repurposed to make net zero fuel where we combine in some way with captured carbon piped from all the power stations and industries and stored at Milford.
Maybe possible but at what cost? An awful lot of infrastructure needed to do this, have the accountants runs a slide rule over this notion?
The nasty thought is that sooner or later we may have to do something like this - or find some miracle like fusion. Perhaps something nice and handy and cheap will turn up. More likely not.
I suppose it could be argued that wind and solar ARE fusion - given that they're sourced from that big and successful fusion reactor 93 million miles away.
Apparently, according to the man with the lilt, Ireland only needs 5 more flywheels to balance their grid. Yes, that might be true for a short duration fluctuation, but it'll require more than that number when the wind hasn't been viable (too weak or too strong) for a number of days or weeks.
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