Most power sold on the grid is consumed close to where it is produced. You are proposing something completely different. The grid does not carry electricity long distances well.
You are under the impression that, because the grid is connected, no matter where in the grid the electricity is injected it can be consumed somewhere else on the grid. That is patently not true.
The way the cycles tided work electricity production would start low and peak near high and low tide. From the article the installation can only produce electricity 14 hours a day. Much of that 14 hours is not at peak power. Do you think a 50% duty cycle is adequate?
In addition, when supply is high and local demand is low, they could always sell the excess.
In addition, when supply is high and local demand is low, they could always sell the excess.
How does this excess electricity get to non-local consumers? There is significant line loss over long distances and the grid has to have the capacity to carry it.
I never said anything about a conspiracy. All it takes is the one company that is designing and building the installation to hide the real issues and, because it is "green", the installation get built. No conspiracy necessary. When it is discovered that much of the production can not be used due to its uneven nature it is too late.
The main issue with many of these projects is that the people looking at them a too short sighted. Sure producing electricity from tidal is viable. The problem is that integrating large amounts into the grid is problematic. The engineers working on the projects sluff that issue off by saying "the grid will handle it". Well the grid is having enough trouble handing PV and wind generated electricity. Lets throw another variable into the grid balancing act. Engineers on individual production projects just don't care what issues they cause the grid and that is a problem.
All I am saying is that engineers who design green power may not be paragons of virtue. Their motivation may not be "save the planet". It could possibly be "make lots of money", just like most engineers.
The difference being that those interruptions happen only once or twice a day. Add four more times a day and there are issues.
Electricity is generated depending on the difference in water height. If you try to delay too long the water level will be the same in the next tide therefore no height difference and no electricity generation. Say they close the gate at high tide. At next high tide the water level on the outside of the wall will be the same as on the inside of the wall. They will have lost all possible electricity generation for that cycle.
they can make arrangements with commercial/industrial consumers to match demand with supply.
Theoretically possible but not practical. No industry is going to synchronize their production with the tides. There are 4 peaks a day and that is to many for industry.
it may not be continuous 24/7 but you get it between 4pm and 10pm,
Tides run on a 24 hours and 50 minutes cycle. Each day the highs and lows get an hour later. Also there are 4 cycles which means the plant produces for 3.5 hours each cycle which makes producing from 4PM to 10PM impossible.
I vote to re-use all the old gas meters we have kicking around for the task!
Gas meters are not high volume pumps. That was funny. The other issue is that only a few places are viable to use as pumped storage.
Why the fuck do so many people on Slashdot think they're smarter than the actual professionals who create these designs for a living and have already thought through and solved all these problems?
Because many of these actual professionals just want the investment money so they can line their pockets.
Do you think environmentalists would be in favour if it upped pollution and harmed nature?
Maybe the wool has bell pulled over their eyes by professionals.
They want to build a few of these, and they can control the timing somewhat by delaying the release of water for a few hours.
There are 4 peaks in the day that produce power; two high tides and two low tides. Generating for 14 hours a day means that in each cycle electricity is produced for 3.5 hours. If you delay production by 3.5 hours the water level is the as it was 3.5 hours earlier and electricity can not be produced.
First off, you can't shut down a coal power plant and restart it in only five hours.
You really need to know hoe power plants work before posting. A conventional thermal plant does not "shut down" to reduce power. It will slack off stoking the boilers but will stay at operation temperature. In effect the energy that should have been converted to electricity during tidal production will just be dumped as waste heat.
It is still bad but for a different reason.
The station produces electricity 14 hours a day. That means in each six hour cycle the station produces power for 3.5 hours. That means one would have to ramp up and down conventional power plants four timed a day to compensate. Ramping up and down cost energy in the form of extra burning to ramp up and extra cooling to ramp down. Lets burn extra fuel to use green energy.
Please note that tidal is usually ramping up or down and is stable.only for very few minutes each cycle.
There are 4 cycles that generate electricity 2 high tides and 2 low tides. From the summary they can generate electricity for about 14 hours a day that means that within each 6 hour cycle the generate power for 3.5 hours. Which means that it is 1.5 hours of rising production and 1.5 declining production. Basically if you need to shift production by 2 hours you lose the cycle.
they just need to do a cost/benefit analysis.
Lose enough cycles and the benefit is outweighed by the cost.
While tides are predictable that are also predictably different than electricity demand curves. Storage is still needed to shift production to meet demand. Predictability is not dispatchability. Add the cost of storage need to shift production to demand and the cost is much higher.
Fibre look like copper to the ignorant
They probably thought the pipe had copper wire in it. There are lots of copper thieves.
Intel CPUs are not defective, they just act that way. -- Henry Spencer
