The Problem With Renewable Energy (and how we're fixing it)
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- Опубліковано 17 сер 2016
- ( This isn't a sponsored video, but I am massively grateful to all the team at SSE! Go look: sse.com/whatwedo/ourprojectsan... , and pull down the description for more. )
As the world switches to renewable energy - and we are switching - there's a problem you might not expect: balancing the grid. Rotational mass and system inertia are the things that keep your lights from flickering: and they only appear in big, old, traditional power stations. Here's why that's a problem, and how we're likely going to fix it.
CORRECTION: I say that turbines spin thousands of times "per second" when it should be "per minute". Apologies. You can find all corrections on this channel at www.tomscott.com/corrections/
Thanks to all the team at SSE! FULL DISCLOSURE: This is not a sponsored video, no money has changed hands, and SSE did not have editorial control. But they did go out of their way to arrange access and support for me and my team, including giving us safety training for working at heights. I am incredibly grateful to all the team: Paul and Ed for arranging it all; Bob and Scott who helped us at the turbine; and Calum, Head of Operations, who was keeping an eye on safety throughout.
GO LOOK AT SSE: sse.com/whatwedo/ourprojectsan...
sse.com/whatwedo/wholesale/
sse.com/griffin
The drone footage is from Cyberhawk, www.thecyberhawk.com: they normally do turbine inspections and land surveying, so I'd like to thank them for getting some artistic shots for us too!
And finally, my camera operator was Paul Curry, @cr3, who's written a more experiential post with photos for Buzzfeed: www.buzzfeed.com/paulcurry/we...
I'm at tomscott.com
on Twitter at / tomscott
on Facebook at / tomscott
and on Instagram and Snapchat as tomscottgo
There's a minor correction to this video: I say that turbines spin thousands of times "per second" when it should be "per minute". Apologies. You can find all corrections on this channel at www.tomscott.com/corrections/
Just noticed a correction for the corrections page! The link that should go to this video actually goes to the video about running out of UA-cam IDs.
thought that seemed excessive
I have a question tom?
Hey tom you don’t half get about your vids are interesting especially the on about the secret pipeline that run through uk underground yes it pops up near to me and then back in the ground
Jesus. That thing would’ve been taken off by now.
"Throw another nuclear rod on the barbie"
Lost it at that one
#tbt Technical Difficulties...or was that a Citation Needed joke?
Citation Needed. It's Gary's joke, IIRC.
Which episode is that?
1x06 (Neckarwestheim)
Citation needed. The Neckarwestheim Nuclear Power Plant one.
"And that, is what stops your lights from constanly flickering"
**Lights flicker in my house immidiately after I hear this sentence**
amitzohar42, You have angered the gird.
amitzohar42, You have angered the gird.
"Throw another Nuclear Rod on the barbie, mate" - Common power station manager phrase
@Russ Gallagher Not any nuclear power stations no. Uranium refineries, and experimental/ school owned reactors, yes.
Translated from the Russian, presumably.
no worries!
second 1000th like today!
@@everettrailfan Get out.
Yeah but a big monolithic battery would still be cool af.
Depends on several factors. Could easily be pretty warm or even rather hot actually...
RealLuckless Run liquid nitrogen in it
Bob Shaw Compressed gas energy storage: The battery IS liquid nitrogen!
RealLuckless Even better!
Easy bomb target
This is the last video before I set off for the Arctic! On Monday, we start a run of guest videos by some amazing UA-camrs who you might not have heard of: they're all videos I'd be happy to do myself, so hopefully y'all will greet them as warmly as you can! I'll see you in September...
British people say "y'all"? Awesome!
Have fun in the Arctic! 😊
Wear 2 pairs of sock, I've heard it's cold.
Bring me back a penguin! >_^
damnit. i forgot i was wanting to do that video thing you mentioned last time. oh dangit. late again! enjoy the ice and no falling in freezing water this time.
Things have changed since 4 years ago. Now in 2020 the utilities are installing the 'monolithic batteries' that Tom mentioned. The grid scale battery at Hornsdale in Australia has about the same power as Tom's wind farm -- 150 megawatts. Tesla installed it in a few months and it has paid for itself very quickly. These are being installed in the US and other countries. They are solving the problem of frequency regulation that Tom mentioned. Thanks for the video, Tom.
"paid for itself" 🤣🤣🤣
@@russmillerskipplestein dont know what that means? Or you know more on the topic and it has not yet payed for itself?
It's really interesting watching a few years later, with some grid-scale energy storage companies and systems starting to make their way onto the grid.
Well.. is it interesting yet?
I recently wrote my master thesis about the storage demand that comes with volatile renewable e-production. Just like the renewables themselves, we need a large portfolio of solutions to ensure security of supply. There is no wonder solution (like solar roadways and all those other scams). It's really nice to see you making a video about this subject!
Hang on, why are they a scam?
Photovoltaic panels are barely profitable under perfect conditions. And those conditions include being turned sunwards, perfectly clean and not overshadowed by anything. Roads get dirty, face directly up and are covered by cars. Plus, You would need a shitload of super hard transparent material to keep them form being crushed. Storage problems mentioned in the video aside.
Search for +eevblog and thunderf00t's videos on the subject
+GraemeMarkNI Because they only work in the land of unicorns, right where they came from.
It would be infinitely more efficient in terms of installation and generation capacity to just shove the PV cells on rooftops or in fields rather than digging up the entire road network to replace it with something that will function poorly as a road surface and even worse as a power station.
"Just throw another nuclear rod on the barbie" -Tom Scott 2016
more Gary Brannan's joke from 2014, though with more concise phrasing.
from 1x06 in tom's citation needed playlist i believe
not the worst episode but it definitely doesn't hold a candle to the big lobster, simplehuman or flag of mars from the same series
So true. Re-watching the episode, Gary introduces the concept, but Chris creates the exact quote Tom used here.
Reminds me of a joke from Citation Needed. The Neckarwestheim(sp?) episode.
Love your videos. I studied engineering and never did we learn such interesting topics.
That's because you went to the University of Norwich or some other backwards place like it.
The thing I love about this series and really all educational youtube channels is that even though this was posted 2 years ago it still has educational worth to anyone who watches it today. Sure science has improved since then and there are new things to talk about but this has more lasting worth than most other styles of video.
OH MY GOD. HOW HAS NO ONE EVER TOLD ME ABOUT HOW THE TURBINES WORK!? THEY HAVE TO SPIN AT THE SAME RATE!?
Only on traditional power stations that boil water: coal, oil, gas and nuclear! But yes: they all work in time. They have to, the physics of alternating current requires it!
A pretty impressive synchronised song and dance, though not a particularly pleasant one.
***** Here in Sweden we burn trash to create power, but I bet it's the same deal.
If they rotate 60 times a second, you get 60hertz electricity.
If you rotate 50 times, you get 50.
Every time the turbine turns, it pushes electricity one way through the wire and then the magnets flip and they push electricity the other way. The magnets are literally pushing electrons inside the wire, those electrons push other electrons and so on for thousands of miles of power line.
Eventually the electrons push and push all the way into your house until they push your fan to make it turn. Or they might push through a heater so the friction makes the wire heat up. No matter what you use it for, there are a bunch of turbines pushing electrons into your house.
The electrical grid isn't a single powerline that goes to your house, it doesn't work like that. The power grid has to push "450,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines" (source: Energy.gov) before it can push any energy into your house.
Imagine hooking up a garden hose, since its empty of water you have to wait for it to fill before water comes out the end. Now imagine you have 450,000 miles of garden hoses. they are all connected together but you have several spigots feeding the hoses. That is the grid.
If you use power, you are pouring water from the grid, which means somewhere has to pour more water in.
Now what does this analogy mean for this video?
Turbines are VERY GOOD at giving a steady power source. Like the video said when they drop they might only drop to 59.8hertz before going back to 60. Wind power on the other hand depends on the wind, and also you have to "brake" to slow down wind turbines if you aren't geared specifically enough to end up with 60hertz. Changing how the blades of the wind turbine catch the wind isn't only for getting the most amount of power, its about keeping it regular.
And don't get me started on how spotty solar power is.
Nuclear power plants work in 4 or 8 year cycles. (barring problems) They produce 99.99% to 100% capacity constantly. After 4 to 8 years, they shut down the plant to add more nuclear material and do maintenance on things which have broken down. Emergency shutoffs loose several million dollars a day. This is called an "outage" and they pay a LOT OF MONEY for high quality workers that can work faster. If they would lose 15m dollars a day, they will pay 14.9999m dollars to make the outage 1 day faster. But I digress.
Basically, The only reason that we (currently) have the ability to use wind and solar power is because the grid has hundreds of turbines pushing the grid. The the large turbines are like 100 horses pushing a heavy cart of electrons while wind/solar is like someone hitting the back of a cart with a hammer, yea it does push the electrons but not nearly as well as the team of horses.
There have been steps to run the grid fully on renewable resources, but in my opinion the longterm goal of that has a lot of problems which are solved by large turbines. When damn power is not available, nuclear is the next best thing.
(Source for opinions on nuclear power: Father worked in nuclear power for navy 21 years, currently works in a nuclear power plant training program. In order to be a trainer you must have 100% credentials and licenses to be able to run a power plant so he could easily run a nuclear power plant)
(Source #2 for opinions on outages: I'm a welder)
(Source #3 for amount of deaths caused by coal:
A. J. Cohen et al., The global burden of disease due to outdoor air pollution, Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A, 68: 1301-1307
NAS, Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use Committee on Health, Environmental, and Other External Costs and Benefits of Energy Production and Consumption; Nat. Res. Council, Wash., D.C. ISBN: 0-309-14641-0 (2010). )
they are called synchronous machines and they do this naturally, you don't really need to make them do it, you just need to make sure they stick at the right frequency. it happens because there is an electromagnetic coupling (i.e. they stick to each other like an elastic band) between the spinning turbine and the electricity generated in the grid. if one slows down the other pulls it back to where it needs to be and vice versa.
I would prefer Tom instead of my current Geography teacher tbh
And math teacher and informatics teacher and physics teacher and language teacher and and and...
Nillie Indeed.
+gatesofcerdes What you're describing is called a *funny* and *very entertaining* video. The issue with it is that only about half of the video (or less) is actual information (and not all of it useful).
***** I'd agree, except you don't need breaks *that* often. Every 30-45min is usually enough.
Nillie Not at all, but their density of (useful/interesting) information is usually much lower than one of Tom's great Things You Might Not Know videos.
This is precisely the reason I want to study energy storage. If we have a breakthrough in energy storage where we can store energy at even 50% efficiency, we can be able to run grids reliably higher than needed because there's a place for that energy to go.
Here in the northwest United States, we have the massive batteries you're looking for in the form of hydro. The local rivers actually fluctuate in depth on a daily basis as electricity demand fluctuates.
"Umm, we'll be filming this on a turbine Tom."
"Bloody hell, is it okay if I wear a go pro if I fall?"
"Might as well"
I like your style, it's like every adventurer's dream to just go out in the world and be where stuff is happening. I appreciate your reports on them.
not only do I love all the amazing and interesting information you provide for us, and the exciting measures you go to to deliver it, but I love listening to your voice too, you have a good voice.
You know whats so amazing about you tom? you always got good stuff, nothing boring, nothing over the top, just the good and amazing stuff. Keep it going mate
I will forever love the phrase "Throw another nuclear rod on the barbie"
*WOW!*
I just learned a lot in just 4 minutes about a topic I thought I was pretty well informed about.
That does not sound like much, but from me this is about the highest praise I can give someone in a youtube comment.
How modest. But yes, Tom is indeed really interesting in this, as usual in all his videos.
Concur.
r/iamverysmart
Hm, yeah....
reading it again it sound like I'm waving a "I'm so smart" flag with a marching band backing me up. That was not my intention, rather a bumbling attempt of explaining the way I speak and like here, give honest praise, not by stating "this is the best video ever" on every second video I post, but by stating how it impressed me and exceeded my expectations.
But your comments about modesty gave me a good chuckle and I might try to phrase things a little more mindful hereafter.
Wolfram Stahl
I too do english
been watching some of your videos from across the pond and this one made me want to say 'impressive' something I had no clue of and its actually in a field I care about and have actually done research on in the past. I just wish the USA could jump on renewable energy as well. Keep up the good work. I personally appreciate it.
It's videos like this that make me mad that no one ever bothered to tell me anything about how power grids work... it was a glorious video.
"Rotating thousends of times a second"? I don't believe you.
Ah, blast! Three people reviewed the script, and then the finished video and none of us spotted I said "second" instead of "minute"! You're absolutely right: that should be thousands of times a *minute*.
Most steam turbines for power generation are directly coupled (no gearbox) to the altenator. That mean they turn at 3000rpm or 50 times a second (3600rpm 60Hz in US). Tom should have said thousands of times per minute.
+finbat I think he says second, but the closed captioning says minute. At the very least the CC should be edited.
if you turn on subtitles it says minutes. i guess thats what he had in the script but brains do weird stuff sometimes.
The closed captions correct this lapse.
Really good explanation! I never thought that the fluctuations are controlled with kinetic energy. How awesome is that!
Thanks. I work in the utility industry and you did a great job of explaining the interesting challenges ahead.
I'm curious how this is solved in Iceland. I've always seen claims that Iceland runs on 100% renewable energy - or is this not a problem that exists for hydropower?
+Sven Slootweg Iceland has volcanoes. Their turbines are powered by just pumping water down and letting the earth heat it up. Once you've paid to set up the equipment, the power and hot water is basically free!
... and since it is steam turbine based it has the same resilience mechanism as coal and nuclear stations.
No thats not right we use geothermal power stations that pump up water that is about 300°c (Wich is not pumped down like you said) Those stations produce about 30% of our electricity, the rest is mostly produced by hydropower plants.
Hydropower as in dams or hydropower as in tidal?
hydro as in Dam in pretty much a nuclear station but with water and gravity instead of steam and nuclear fission. In Quebec we are about 90% hydro, 2% fossil (remote areas), 8% new energy (wind & solar mostly) and 0% nuclear and we don't have any of those problems. The hydros station act as an kinetic accumulator just as much as a steam generator.
One simply can't hate engineering
does Britains future include nuclear power and renewable or is the UK trying to move away from nuclear power?
As I write this, that's a very difficult and politically sensitive question: the government is hesitating about a new (and extremely expensive) nuclear power plant. We won't know the answer for a few weeks!
Lets hope they move toward nuclear power.
Yes they are building a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C (in Somerset) problem is it is too expensive compared to Wind in Price per MWatt, and relies heavily on Chinese investment to get going. It was recently put on hold but seems to be because of the economic instability from Brexit and worries whether the EDF (who are supposed to be building it) can keep their end of the bargain investment wise.
As an American I don't know the UK's stance on nuclear. Here the only real opposistion are environmental groups and the Green Party
I think Hinckley is going to be a bit of a fail for the history books. I'd now be looking to Wylfa, where the (british) company responsible for building the next generation NPP in Wales is already putting financial feelers out to the local community to start growing new, LOCAL nuclear technicians, because nuclear personnel shortage is a massive problem facing both the National Grid and the Navy. It looks like they've got a good plan, at least compared to the Hinckley debacle.
that ending talking about using many small batteries instead of big ones is giving me gandalf "I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay" vibes, and i love it
This is so great! I live in Iowa, one of the leading states in the U.S. producing energy from wind. That question about the grid and how we handle getting the power where it needs to go as well as how to keep it steady and reliable is something I didn't quite understand yet. I'm glad there are solutions on the horizon. In the meantime, I love the view on my horizon of hundreds of graceful feats of engineering turning with the prairie breeze.
Kelli, if it’s breeze it is very unlikely the the turbines are producing any electricity. Nothing, when the breeze is below a certain threshold.Wind turbines HAVE TO HAVE INERTIA BACK UP UNDER THESE CONDITIONS.
"Throw another nuclear rod on the barbey...", I am a solid 87% sure that that is a quote from an episode of Citation Needed.
+Nillie That's the one! It was really bugging me that I couldn't remember which one it was! That said...I should've made an educated guess that it was in the episode about the nuclear power station.
This still does take into account the need to transport the energy produced at Griffin to other parts of the grid. Very often the gird can’t handle the power that is being generated and it is curtailed (wasted).
Tom you make me doubt humanity less one video at a time. Godspeed and thank you from across the pond my friend.
All I can seem to come up with is a very sincere “you are remarkable”.
Yup. Big bird choppers too. Inconsistent power. Can’t pay for themselves before they are wore out. Reclamation costs are astounding. Lots of negative about free wind power.
3:15 GCSE physics this year had this as a question; using electronic car batteries to keep supply matching demand. Saw the question and thought instantly of this video, thanks Tom! Got a grade 9 which I wouldn’t have got without this video, thanks Tom!
Honestly explained the general concepts much better than a thick book. Well-done.
Thumbs up, this was very interesting, would love another one expanding on it. Particularly the information about grid connected cars supplying battery capacity and intelligent devices turning on and off depending on demand.
does the 50 vs 60 cycles per second power thing also dictate the 50fps vs 60fps framerates difference between the UK and the US?
Yes, that is exactly why they are different. It was a way to remove one possible element of interference in the early days of television.
Yes. Many kinds of electric lights subtly flicker at double the mains frequency (so 100 or 120Hz) and if your video capture isn't at a multiple of this you get weird flicker effects.
This is also why video recordings of most CRTs have a horizontal black bar that moves up or down the screen, at different speeds, depending on if you are in a 60Hz or 50Hz country, since video is usually recorded at 24 (+/- a few fractional frames) fps.
thomas - you mean film? videotape is 25 or 30, and digital is 25, 30, 50 or 60 (usually 30 though, because of american companies)
wow, i can't edit my post.
i was going to add that digital CAN do 24 but usually doesn't, except on super expensive gear, but even then, that's usually equipment for making a big cinematic release, not someone recording a home video with their tv in.
Hypothetically, one could run a pumped-hydro facility in a closed loop, when necessary: if you run out of high water, just turn on the pumps simultaneously with running the generators. That way you gain the stability advantages of the generator even when you don't actually need the generating capacity, per se.
Tom Scott has made a video on that very system in Britain
Wow, that was the most informative 4 minutes that I've ever experienced.
IMHO, far too few people here in the States are proficient in the Art of the Throwback - which made 1:51 immensely satisfying. All the best on your trip - I'm guessing this means we'll get a passing mention of "Tom Scott... On Ice?" ;-)
Love these videos as always! Have you ever considered going into a bit more depth on the hydro stuff? Dinorwig in Snowdonia (the electric mountain) do guided tours and I'm sure they'd appreciate the publicity - plus it's just a fascinating bit of engineering :)
I've visited Dinorwig, a couple of years ago -- they didn't allow cameras in, and I didn't have enough subscribers to be able to get in. Some other time :)
Let me know if you want a contact for that Tom, I'll see what I can do ;)
They let Robert Llewellyn in with cameras.
@@TomScottGo how about now?
0:17
"Hi MTV, I'm Tom Scott and this is my Crib"
South Australia went and installed one of the aforementioned monolithic batteries. It has actually kept the grid synchronised very well, once responding in much less than a second, keeping the grid stable even when a 600MW generator fell off a cliff. The one advantage of this approach is, even though it is a complex system, it is still not as difficult to orchestrate as a bunch of independent, latency seperated smaller batteries. That isn't to say it is the only or best solution, but it is viable currently and immediately.
Very good explanation of a constantly overlooked problem.
The only comment I have is that wind mills are not fundamentally unusable for stabilizing the power grid. The problem is that most wind mills are (as you mentioned) nowadays connected to the net with power electronics to generate the right frequency. If you were to connect them with a synchronous generator, you wouldn't have this problem. Downside is that this drastically lowers the efficiency of the windmill.
Dude you are travelling everywhere and you work a lot of time for these quality videos.
We won't get mad at you if you accept some money for product placement as long as the quality stay the same
thats an amazing idea with the car! I love it : )
Some people over here complain about windmills being irritating for causing vibrations.Thanks for kinda explaining how load works on the generators. I wondered what happened to the extra energy such as when an a/c shuts off. I'm guessing the circuit breakers would blow when demand soars because the low voltage turns the watts into more amps and that heats the breaker to trio it.
"throw another nuclear rod on the barbie"
Yes, I remember that episode of Citation Needed.
I've never had a size reference for wind turbines before. They're somehow both bigger _and_ smaller than I thought they'd be. Thanks for the video, Tom!
I find it funny and somewhat impressive that you're on top of a wind turbine, yet I can hear no wind.
that's what the fuzzy things on the end of mics is for
Jeez guys. I know about mic wind gaurds. I just thought it was funny.
The turbine was also turned off for maintenance. And the other turbines weren't very fast, so the wind was probably not very strong when they filmed it.
That's not a problem with renewable energy, it's a problem with wind power. Hydroelectricity for example doesn't have this problem at all, as by definition, it stores energy in big water reservoirs at the top of giant turbines, to be released over time or whenever a need arises. In Quebec, hydroelectricity accounts for nearly 97% of all electricity produced, not just renewable, and therefore the network doesn't have the problem you mentioned.
These videos are so informative, keep up the good work.
Superb, as always. Have a great trip.
"Throw another nuclear rod on the barbie." Died. :D
That was pretty damn awesome.
Great work as always Tom, this came out pretty damn awesome ;)
Nuclear reactors are not load following. Typically they will operate at their exact life cycle loading pattern. It's typically natural gas that adapts to the grid, then coal and other consumables.
I appreciate the time you took to explain a little bit about the electrical grid. I find myself quite often explaining the situation of a balanced grid, and the short comings and strengths of renewables by type. I put the nuclear comment atop because people have short spans of attention, and it's nice to know! Keep it up!
"I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love." ~ Gandalf (J. R. R. Tolkein ~ The Hobbit)
That would really stink. You charge your car in anticipation for a errand you have to run and as you get your car to go, you notice the battery has been depleted to balance the grid. :\
Love your videos! short, sweet, to the point.
Thanks for explaining all of this to me. I just want to know all possible reasons we are slow(well not as fast) to convert to renewable energy sources.
Nuclear power is clean and constantly evolving and improving. Too bad fear and misinformation has basically killed the nuclear research & development.
But Nuclear Fission isn't renewable, there is only a finite amount of fuel. It also requires a lot of security. Nuclear Fusion looks like the future.
*cough cough* thorium *cough cough*
While LFTR may not be the best technology, it does prove a point... there are other ways to get power from atoms that doesnt have the extremely bad fission products. Oh and thorium is one of the more abundant elements on the planet.
But hey, this is all absurd. Wind power and tofu! Thats the way of the future!
We are currently using 1% of the potential energy of uranium. Nuclear energy provides 10% of electricity globally since about 50 years. So if we switch to better reactors (fast breeders) that can release all energy from the fuel, than we could power the world from the currently existing waste for 500 years. And that's just the civilian reactors, bomb making also creates a huge amount of waste. We don't even know how much uranium is available, because we didn't have to look too hard so far. Than there is thorium which is 4x more abundant, and it's the byproduct of rare earth mining.
András Bíró you dont understand! wind and solar have been chosen as the new energy sources!
theonlyari
Not everywhere, and it still can change. In most countries the share of renewables is single digit. There are few countries that use lot more renewables. but that's because they lucky, and have lot more hydro, geothermal, or wind then most others. Solar may be usable in deserts, but the cost is still very high.
Nuclear energy can be used everywhere, and it's one of the cheapest of all energy sources. And France proved that it can be quickly deployed at large scale.
Politicians support wind and solar because they are owned by Big Oil, and they know that those are not a big threat to fossil fuels. When will wind and solar be ready to power at least 90% of the world? 100 years?
Nuclear could have eliminated fossil fuels decades ago.
Hundreds of tons, thousands of times a second. Not quite. ;)
When the grid needs power, they don't change the output at nuclear stations. Nuclear power stations are very slow to turn up or down. No where near fast enough to meet public demands. Nuclear power stations typically already run at near maximum output, since that's when they are at their most efficient. Basically when the grid needs power they use pumped storage hydroelectric stations. There is one in North Wales called Dinorwig, or more commonly known as "Electric Mountain" since the powerstation is inside of a mountain. It's right next to the train station for the train that goes up Snowdon. And the public can visit. Basically you have a reservoir at the top of a mountain, and when there is a sudden demand for electricity, they open a big giant plug hole and drain the reservoir, forcing water through the turbines to generate electricity. Then when demand for electricity is low, they buy electricity back from the grid, in order to pump the water back up. Works like a giant gravity powered battery.
Edit. I should have listened to whole video before typing this message out. -_-
the also have Gas turbine open cycle stations on very short run up times 20 mins or so
Are hydroelectric power plants on the rise as a replacement for fossil fuels? If so, that opens another area of sustainability, in terms of our influence on the flow of rivers and surrounding ecologies.
Im not sure how about rest of the world, but in Czech Republic we are already using most of our hydroelectric potential and it makes up for only 4% of electric consumption. I guess that most of developed countries are in similar ssitutation.
Why don't we just use big masses of steel rotating that are powered with abundant electricity and use them when said is needed. If they are oiled well or suspended in another efficient way, they might be very good at keeping their momentum. And they aren't very expensive, you could make steel containers and fill them with sand or rock. Just the suspension is difficult to build. Maybe some kind of magnets would work. But probably not electric ones...
I love Tom and I love renewable energy. So this equalled a fantastic video.
Reminds me of a story my dad told me, he used to work in the old telephone exchanges in the 1950's and 1960's as a technicians. They had HUUGE flywheels spinning in the basement of the exchanges 24/7, and in the event of a power failure some of the technicians would have to run down to the basement and slowly release complicated sets of clutches so the flywheels could start massive generators.
Thousands of times a minute, I think you mean!
throw a nuclear rod on the barbie? nice citation needed reference
simplistic understanding and explanation of power generation, added to that the day you filmed there was no wind so windfarms are not the total answer you think they are, which is why will always need nuclear and hydro in the UK.
Recently i've been a visitor to an electronics fair in munich and had the chance to talkt to a guy who trys to do exactly that: Make cars give energy back.
But sadly right now the car manufactorers are refusing to enable that in their cars, as it would make the cars practically cheaper stationary batteries. And because they would need to change their software for no reason from their viewpoint. But that guy worked on an open source software solution and workarounds for all kinds of cars to enable that.
Sadly i cannot find his card anymore but he was at the Texas Insturments booth, so shoutout to them i guess.
Please talk about Thorium. Great video.
nice meme
yeah thorium molten salt reactors are pretty interesting.
Nah... there are batteries that exist to meet massive demand. It's called uranium-235 :D
nuclear power is constant, it can't be added or removed at the drop of a hat.
Yes, but it's still a store of energy from gravitational collapse.
Nuclear power can be very responsive, depending on how you design the reactor. The plants in nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers can ramp up and down quickly, for example. You're right that most of the ones currently built for power generation can't do it very well though.
The French have a shedload of nuclear power and load-follow with it pretty effectively, without using highly enriched uranium like the military reactors, so it can be done in civilian applications. Most existing reactors don't even bother trying because the fuel costs are so low compared to the capital and operating costs that you can practically give the power away and it still makes more economic sense than having your multi-billion-dollar investment sitting idle.
You sure do get to see some awesome places.
This a potential great option for a revisit, if you're able to get out to Dogger Bank or similar - especially now we had months without coal power over summer.
Telling Science like it is... "Throw another nuclear rod on the Barbie"
I had a good chuckle from that, he's referencing a line from Citation Needed! Episode 1x06, about Neckarwestheim, give it a watch when you have the time! (I would link it, but it would mark my comment as spam...)
“We don't need a big net for a DOS attack, we need a lot of smaller ones for a DDOS attack”
One of the main balancing options is actually the turbine-bypass at these large power plants. If the demand rises, theses close down reducing the efficiency of the plant but simultaneously outputting more power. This can be done in seconds and is also crucial for grid stability.
Every time I'm driving through that park in Forza I look out for Tom now
Makes me appreciate nuclear all the more. Small relative footprint, abundant fuel, clean, waste issues are very manageable (engineeering-wise, political will notwithstanding), and best of all, it runs when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.
I'm glad to hear another person say something like that. :D
Problem with nuclear is the safety rings around it that prevent alot of km in radios from being built in.
Electric generators revolve thousands of times per second? WOT? Did he mean to say per minute?
Probly
Probably. 50Hz by definition means 50 times a second.
+ReddwarfIV Yeah, but that's the frequency of the AC delivered at the end; it needn't be the same as the rotor's revolutions per second. Of course, while it's to be expected that the rotor would have more than one coil/magnet along its circumference, it's rather harder to imagine a setup with _less_ than one. But that doesn't preclude some mechanical or electrical shenanigans between the turbine and the output.
50hz is after the gearbox.
Yes. The ones used in power plants are typically something like 3,000 or 3,600 RPM. (Google Siemens SST-900 for an example.)
Thank you so much for making a video about energy!
My best vid of 2016, really good vid, thanks.
What about thorium reactors?
Apparently those have issues with containing molten salts. We may not have a reactor vessel capable of holding them.
Or fusion which run on hydrogen and the only bi-product is completely fresh water. A few years in the future but its amazing.
+ReddwarfIV
Two prototype reactors were running for years in the '60s, so it's not impossible. Corrosion is a problem, but not unsolvable. And it's also possible to build the reactor for 20 years instead of 60 and then the corrosion is less important.
+TangoNation Radioactive helium, not fresh water. And then the protective plates in the reactor that become radioactive and have to be replaced at regular intervals.
But it's quite tame compared to fission in terms of waste.
Miku Chan Ah never-mind then. I stand corrected ha
That looks like the same place as in fh4 hmmm...
Brilliant, exactly how I try to explain to clients what's going on.
A lot of current wind and all solar relies on electronic wizardry to feed into the grid, much like any HVDC around.
I know some wind turbines are fitted with synchronous generators and have special gearboxes to ensure wind speed variations do not cause too many issues. They also have the advantage of producing reactive power when required (hydro plants can do this in Tail Water Depression mode).
Anyone else impressed by the camera work?
I think it should all be nuclear and green, people are scared of nuclear power even though it's carbon free and i for one wouldn't want to rely on green energy. Certainly not in the UK where solar and wind are a bit sporadic...
But Fission isn't renewable.
You can recycle nuclear fuel for longer than the Sun will last.
Plus, Thorium, a nuclear fuel, is brought up with almost any ore, especially rare earths, so we'd be running off the wasteproducts of mining.
It'd still last alot longer than hydrocarbons, and pollutes less if you do it right. (The US doesn't, and seemingly never will.)
In the VERY long term? No. But Gen IV reactors will be able to create more fuel-grade fissile material than they consume, and in future we may be able to gather it from space.
We just have to buy enough time to develop fusion, and than we are good for a few quadrillion years.
Great video. Shame you didn't show more of the climbing and getting up the wind turbine and more about it's workings
This is the most inspirational video I've seen in a while
"millions of small ones up and down the country" this is assuming the majority of people will get electric cars which I am not seeing, since the biggest problem has not only not been solved, it has not even appeared on the radar: where to charge all these cars? Everyone seems to assume everyone has their own house with a garage...
Tesla literally setup a country wide system of charging stations for the U.S..
***** so what, everyone plans a few hours of their day to hang around at those charging stations?
It only takes a few minutes to get a full charge. and the tech only gets. You already spend time at gas stations. Stop being short sighted.
Those are called superchargers, because it only takes 20-30 minutes. Those cars can go up to 400 kms without recharging, so you would probably only use superchargers if you went for a longer trip, otherwise you can just charge it at home during night. If I recall correctly those superchargers are also free!
***** standard SAEJ1772 can charge at ~20kW and the modelS has like 60-90kWh batteries, now do the math how long it takes. Even with superchargers you provide 120kW, which takes at least 30min for small 60kWh batteries (assuming 100% efficieny btw.)
Can you link or explain system inertia please? I find it fascinating the thought of all that spinning metal.
A little over a decade ago i had the opportunity to have a one on one with John Wellinghoff, the outgoing chairman of the FERC. He said the same thing. He imagined parking garages as huge batteries that can be used as peak shaving. BMW a test with the utility here on the west coast and now with Tesla’s power wall, this is becoming a reality
*Nuclear power has entered the chat*
Throwing nuclear fuel rods on the barbie like they were shrimp
#NationalGridlyf
I love the little info bubble correcting his mistakes 😂
Has there been a video here on that two lake 'emergency' power station, or did I see that elsewhere?
If my EV can support the grid, it can certainly support my off-grid system. Distributed generation is a better solution.