"Chris J Dixon" wrote in message
...
Mike Tomlinson wrote:

I saw a solar panel installation a couple days ago. On the gable end of
a house. Pointing roughly north-east. With the gable end of the
adjacent house about 6m away.

Like this one?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jim_eas...ok/5937685450/

That's not a gable end, that's a wall.

On 18/05/16 19:34, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Wed, 18 May 2016 18:35:18 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 18/05/16 18:24, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Wed, 18 May 2016 18:06:54 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 18/05/16 17:17, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Wed, 18 May 2016 13:59:31 +0100, Chris Hogg wrote:

On Wed, 18 May 2016 11:45:44 GMT, lid (AnthonyL)
wrote:

Out of curiosity, anyone calculate how many panels
would be needed to lift one ton(ne) in say 6hrs of average light?

To make that question sensible, you'd need to specify the height
you're lifting it to.

Here's a calculation (stepwise, for my benefit, and to allow it to be
torn to shreds by those who can do it better, as I don't believe the
result!).

The upper lake at Dinorwig is a little over 500 metres above the lower
lake, so I'll assume a height of 500 metres.

1 tonne exerts 9806 Newtons of force.

The work done raising 1 tonne by 500 metres is 9806x500 = 4903000
Newton-metres.

A Joule is 1 Newton-metre, so the work done raising 1 tonne by 500
metres is 4903000 Joules.

This is achieved in 6 hrs, or 6x60x60 = 21600 seconds.

Units of power are Joules per second

So the power required is 4903000/21600 = 227 Joules per second.

A Joule per second is a Watt.

So the power required to raise 1 tonne by 500 metres in 6 hours is 227
Watts.

AIUI a typical domestic solar panel delivers 260 Watts at full blast.

So 1 panel should do it, with a little to spare.

I find that hard to believe! Where have I gone wrong?

Seems OK to me. 100 meters an hour is 27mm or a little over an inch a
second.

A human being with a tackle can lift a tonne that fast easy.

In fact an Irish Navvy could shovel and lift 30 tonnes a day back in the
50's.

I think you are encountering the true meaning of 'energy density' - that
a tonne of water up a hill is actually not really that interesting -
maybe a couple of Kwh at best.

Thanks for the confirmation. Reversing the calculation, as it were,
Dinorwig dumps 60 tonnes per second through its turbines, from a head
of 500 metres and for a period of 6 hours. If 1 tonne moving through
500 metres in 6 hours is equivalent to 1 solar panel, Dinorwig is
equivalent to 60x21600 solar panels, i.e. 1,296,000 panels. I'll leave
it to AnthonyL to work out how much of Wales that would cover!

Actually insolation is on average about 100W/sq meter and a solar panel
maybe gets to 25% efficiency, so 25W/sq meter on average. Obviously
midsummer midday peaks are considerably higher - 10 x that.

IIRC Dinorwig can peak at 2GW, but not for 6h, thats less than a GW at
that level.

At 4 sq meters per hundred watts, that's 40 sq meters for a killer-watt
or 40 sq km for a gigawatt?

Hmm...yes, I see my mistake. It was in assuming a typical solar panel
produce 260 Watts at full blast. That's a mfr's figure for peak output
when insolated at 1000 Watts/sq.m. As you say, with insolation at 100
Watts/sq.metre and a conversion efficiency of 25% gives 25
Watts/sq.metre, so the answer to the OP's question is about 10 panels.


Yes. Its a very easy way to confuse greens and paint solar energy as
better than it is by using PEAK output rather than AVERAGE output.

I.e. 'Britain has 4GW of domestic solar capacity. Britains average
demand is 30 GW.

WOW!. 7% of all our electricity comes from solar!

NOT!

The average output of those panels is 400MW. And almost none of that
comes in the darkest months of winter when it is needed the most.

And if Euean Mearns is to be believed, that solar took more energy to
erect than it will ever pay back, making it utterly pointless in terms
of carbon emission reduction anyway, and if the rest of the skeptics are
correct, carbon reduction in the atmosphere won't do anything except
hamper plant growth.



--
"Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social
conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the
windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.) "

Alan Sokal

On 18/05/16 20:50, Johnny B Good wrote:
On Wed, 18 May 2016 09:29:04 +0100, Chris Hogg wrote:

On Wed, 18 May 2016 09:13:12 +0100 (BST), "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:

On 16 May 2016 21:31:51 GMT, Huge wrote:

What's even more amazing is that with the press of a button
marked
"MAXGEN"[1], it can go from zero to full output in 15 seconds.

I think that's from in sync spinning in air, rather than
stationary.

They keep one turbine spinning all the time in order to provide
"instant" output. I think it's rather less that 15 seconds, too.

The information about the various start times seems to have disappeared
from the web. A turbine on line and using water I should imagine can go
from "tickover" to full chat as fast as the inlet valve can open. As you
say I'd expect rather less than 15 seconds.

The 10 seconds figure I mentioned related to the time it took to open or
close the giant penstock gate valve(s) feeding the turbines.


I wonder how many tonnes of water per second each turbine uses at
maximum output?

At maximum flow to the turbine hall is 60 cu.m/sec. There are 6
turbines, so 10 cu.m/sec. i.e. 10 tonnes/sec. each
http://tinyurl.com/4nj8a9

I get the impression that they can keep them spinning with compressed
air, which reduces the time to full output compared with a standing
start. But whether all of them spin that way, all of the time, I don't
know.

They don't use compressed air to keep them spinning whenever they need
them in 'Hot Standby' running in air. The turbines use the generator as a
motor to maintain synchronous speed so all that is required to change
from motoring mode to generator mode is basically just a matter of
"Turning on the tap" and adjusting the excitation current to raise the
stator output voltage.

This rather neatly avoids the need to synchronise from a standing start
but at a cost of 4MW per turbine. I'm afraid I can't recall whether all
six turbine sets had this hot standby running in air capability or not.
One thing is for certain, the 90MW turbine sets at Ffestiniog had no such
hot standby feature, hence their much longer 60 seconds run up time.

Pretty much any directly coupled AC generator generator is a motor and
will normally sit there happily taking mains power to spin, until
something causes it to try and spin faster when its internal phase
advances and it starts to push the current along as a true generator.

However in grid terms 60 seconds is 'instant' anyway. There is enough
energy storage in all those spinning rotors on the grid* to cope with
fluctuations in demand on that sort of timescale.

*'intermittent renewable' energy excepted. The electronic converters
have no sort of storage in them such as that afforded by huge spinning
turbines.

Years ago I was on board an aircraft used as a research tug by Decca
radar. There was this whining noise in the cabin... 'what's that?'
'that's the rotary converter to generate mains voltage from the
batteries' 'Ugh! why not have a (then newfangled) transistorised
inverter!?' 'because that rotary convertor can survive the 50% voltage
drop we get when pulling up the undercarriage, for 30 seconds'



--
The biggest threat to humanity comes from socialism, which has utterly
diverted our attention away from what really matters to our existential
survival, to indulging in navel gazing and faux moral investigations
into what the world ought to be, whilst we fail utterly to deal with
what it actually is.

On 18/05/16 21:13, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artÃ*culo , Chris Hogg
escribió:

I'll leave
it to AnthonyL to work out how much of Wales that would cover!

I think the term would be "a metric ****load".

I did work out that if Loch Ness could be raised 500 feet, and filled
with water, it would supply Britain for the whole winter, and you could
use solar panels to recharge it in summer.

Of course 10 nuclear power stations would be a lot cheaper. And far less
dangerous.


--
€œSome people like to travel by train because it combines the slowness of
a car with the cramped public exposure of €¨an airplane.€�

Dennis Miller

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 19 May 2016 08:15:32 +1000, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

Unless of course you know better than the people that run the scheme,
in which case you should tell them they've got it wrong.

What they say there is no different to what I said.

You are the one that doesn't understand what they were saying.

The entire system is a pump storage system because all
the dams are interconnected and it is only the oldest
dam, Burrinjuck, which has no way to move the water
that has got there back into the other dams.

ROTFLMAO!

You never could bull**** your way out of a wet paper bag.

The whole point of the pumps at Jindabyne
is pump storage for the entire system.

On Wed, 18 May 2016 13:59:31 +0100, Chris Hogg wrote:

On Wed, 18 May 2016 11:45:44 GMT, lid (AnthonyL)
wrote:

On Tue, 17 May 2016 13:56:11 +0100, Chris Hogg wrote:

On Tue, 17 May 2016 11:54:13 GMT, lid (AnthonyL)
wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2016 15:14:06 +0100, Mike Tomlinson
wrote:


"This is because the two reservoirs are linked by one of Britains biggest
post-war industrial projects: the Dinorwig pumped storage power station,
hidden within this mountain. It is effectively a monster battery: power is
stored by pumping water from Llyn Peris to Marchlyn Mawr at night, then
generated by letting it flow back down at times of peak demand"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05...tric_mountain/


Went around in 2003 - very impressive. Would be even more impressive
in solar/wind could be used to refill the top reservoir.

What makes you think it isn't ATM? Electricity, once generated,
becomes anonymous and untraceable, so it's reasonable to assume that a
proportion of the night-time wind-generated electricity goes to
refilling the top reservoir, when there's wind, that is. Of course,
that reservoir is filled at night when demand is low and there's
surplus on the grid, so no solar available for what you suggest.


Solar could do some refilling during the day. Just cover most of
Wales with panels. Out of curiosity, anyone calculate how many panels
would be needed to lift one ton(ne) in say 6hrs of average light?

To make that question sensible, you'd need to specify the height
you're lifting it to.


It is implicit in the subject under discussion and it is already being
done with mains power.

--
AnthonyL

On Thu, 19 May 2016 11:29:48 GMT, lid (AnthonyL)
wrote:

On Wed, 18 May 2016 13:59:31 +0100, Chris Hogg wrote:

On Wed, 18 May 2016 11:45:44 GMT, lid (AnthonyL)
wrote:

On Tue, 17 May 2016 13:56:11 +0100, Chris Hogg wrote:

On Tue, 17 May 2016 11:54:13 GMT, lid (AnthonyL)
wrote:

On Mon, 16 May 2016 15:14:06 +0100, Mike Tomlinson
wrote:


"This is because the two reservoirs are linked by one of Britains biggest
post-war industrial projects: the Dinorwig pumped storage power station,
hidden within this mountain. It is effectively a monster battery: power is
stored by pumping water from Llyn Peris to Marchlyn Mawr at night, then
generated by letting it flow back down at times of peak demand"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05...tric_mountain/


Went around in 2003 - very impressive. Would be even more impressive
in solar/wind could be used to refill the top reservoir.

What makes you think it isn't ATM? Electricity, once generated,
becomes anonymous and untraceable, so it's reasonable to assume that a
proportion of the night-time wind-generated electricity goes to
refilling the top reservoir, when there's wind, that is. Of course,
that reservoir is filled at night when demand is low and there's
surplus on the grid, so no solar available for what you suggest.


Solar could do some refilling during the day. Just cover most of
Wales with panels. Out of curiosity, anyone calculate how many panels
would be needed to lift one ton(ne) in say 6hrs of average light?

To make that question sensible, you'd need to specify the height
you're lifting it to.


It is implicit in the subject under discussion and it is already being
done with mains power.


And I posted this before I saw that you'd worked that out. Thank you
for your efforts.
--
AnthonyL

On Wed, 18 May 2016 20:39:03 +0000, Huge wrote:

On 2016-05-18, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On 16 May 2016 21:31:51 GMT, Huge wrote:

What's even more amazing is that with the press of a button
marked
"MAXGEN"[1], it can go from zero to full output in 15 seconds.

I think that's from in sync spinning in air, rather than
stationary.

They keep one turbine spinning all the time in order to provide
"instant" output. I think it's rather less that 15 seconds, too.

The information about the various start times seems to have disappeared
from the web. A turbine on line and using water I should imagine can go
from "tickover" to full chat as fast as the inlet valve can open. As
you say I'd expect rather less than 15 seconds.

The spinning reserve turbine is spun with electricity, not water.

Indeed, this is so and consumes 4MW from the grid just to keep the
turbine running in air synchronised with the grid so that it is only a
trivial matter of "Opening the Tap" and increasing excitation to reverse
the energy flow from 'motoring' to 'generating'.

The ten seconds time is that required to operate the penstock valve(s)
but I believe it takes another two seconds for the turbine's automatic
governor control to fine tune and stabilise for the generator loading.

The only thing I can't recall is whether this "Hot Standby" mode
(spinning the turbine in dry air) applied only to one of the 6 turbine/
gensets or whether to more than just the one or, indeed, all 6 gensets.

This "Hot Standby" mode is fairly trivial to implement[1] so I'd be
surprised if at least one other genset didn't also have this feature if
only to cover for routine maintenance on the "Primary Hot Standby" genset.
Even if they never intended to run more than any one genset in hot
standby (4MW running cost), including this feature, I would imagine, on
*all* 6 turbines could provide useful diversity of plant usage.

[1] Basically, it's simply a matter of leaving the genset connected to
the grid after being run up and synchronised then shutting off the water
to let the generator motor on as any such generator would do in the
absence of mechanical drive from its prime mover whether steam or gas
turbine or, in this case, high pressure water jets.

The Francis turbine in this case remains dry in order to minimise
unwanted drag (even so, it still needs energy input from the grid at a
work rate of 4MW). The only extra complication that may arise out of such
a motoring mode might be a cooling issue due to the lack of water flow
within the turbine itself.

--
Johnny B Good

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 19 May 2016 19:36:12 +1000, "Rod Speed"
wrote:



"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 19 May 2016 08:15:32 +1000, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

Unless of course you know better than the people that run the scheme,
in which case you should tell them they've got it wrong.

What they say there is no different to what I said.

You are the one that doesn't understand what they were saying.

The entire system is a pump storage system because all
the dams are interconnected and it is only the oldest
dam, Burrinjuck, which has no way to move the water
that has got there back into the other dams.

ROTFLMAO!

You never could bull**** your way out of a wet paper bag.

The whole point of the pumps at Jindabyne
is pump storage for the entire system.

The pumps at Jindabyne are much too small for that.

Bull**** they are.

They have a capacity of a mere 25.5 m^3/sec whereas the pumps
at Tumut-3, the only pumped storage system in the scheme,

More of your pig ignorant lies.

have a capacity of 297.3 m^3/sec, twelve times that volume,

Irrelevant to whether the Jindabyne pumps
are part of the total pump storage system.

and the pumps at Dinorwig, the scheme that you
belittled compared to the Snowy Mountain scheme,

More of your lies.

have a capacity of 384 m^3/sec, fifteen
time greater than those at Jindabyne
http://tinyurl.com/zrjoqd4 .

Irrelevant to whether the Jindabyne pumps
are part of the total pump storage system.

They have no other purpose, ****wit.

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 20 May 2016 19:58:25 +1000, "Rod Speed"
wrote:



"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 19 May 2016 19:36:12 +1000, "Rod Speed"
wrote:



"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
m...
On Thu, 19 May 2016 08:15:32 +1000, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

Unless of course you know better than the people that run the
scheme,
in which case you should tell them they've got it wrong.

What they say there is no different to what I said.

You are the one that doesn't understand what they were saying.

The entire system is a pump storage system because all
the dams are interconnected and it is only the oldest
dam, Burrinjuck, which has no way to move the water
that has got there back into the other dams.

ROTFLMAO!

You never could bull**** your way out of a wet paper bag.

The whole point of the pumps at Jindabyne
is pump storage for the entire system.

The pumps at Jindabyne are much too small for that.

Bull**** they are.

They have a capacity of a mere 25.5 m^3/sec whereas the pumps
at Tumut-3, the only pumped storage system in the scheme,

More of your pig ignorant lies.

have a capacity of 297.3 m^3/sec, twelve times that volume,

Irrelevant to whether the Jindabyne pumps
are part of the total pump storage system.

and the pumps at Dinorwig, the scheme that you
belittled compared to the Snowy Mountain scheme,

More of your lies.

have a capacity of 384 m^3/sec, fifteen
time greater than those at Jindabyne
http://tinyurl.com/zrjoqd4 .

Irrelevant to whether the Jindabyne pumps
are part of the total pump storage system.

They have no other purpose, ****wit.

Ah, the ad hominem attacks. A sure sign you've lost the argument.

That isnt an ad hominem attack it is a statement of fact, ****wit.

Those SnowyHydro pump figures, that you call 'pig ignorant lies'

Everyone can see for themselves that I never said that the pump figures
are pig ignorant lies, you pathetic excuse for a lying bull**** artist.

are from the SnowyHydro website. http://tinyurl.com/jgsqrpm
and the Dinorwig one is from the link I gave. Facts, not lies.

Your claim that the Jindabyne pumps have nothing
to do with pump storage is a pig ignorant lie.

You forget that the Snowy Mountains scheme had a dual purpose.

Another bare faced lie. I have in fact said that repeatedly elsewhere.

It was designed as a combined irrigation and electricity generation
scheme.

Duh. And that is why the oldest dam, Burrunjuck,
does not have any pump storage. But it is the ONLY
one that is not involved in the pump storage.

"The Scheme collects and stores the water that would normally flow
east to the coast and diverts it through trans-mountain tunnels and
power stations. The water is then released into the Murray and
Murrumbidgee Rivers for irrigation". From http://tinyurl.com/jd2n49t
second paragraph.

No news and completely irrelevant to the FACT that the entire system,
with the exception of Burrunjuck is a pump storage system.

And

"The Murray and Murrumbidgee have been subject to control and
intensive development for irrigation for many years; the Snowy,
however, flows through mountainous and practically uninhabited country
until debouching onto the river flats of East Gippsland, not many
miles above its mouth. It has never been controlled in any way, either
for the production of power or for irrigation, and a great proportion
of its waters flow to waste into the sea. As a result, attention has
long been directed towards this river, which has the highest source of
any in Australia and which conducts away a large proportion of the
waters from the south-eastern New South Wales snowfields, and it has
been consecutively considered as a means of supplementing the flow of
the great inland rivers, a source of water supply to the rapidly
growing metropolitan area of Sydney, a means for developing
hydro-electric power and, again, as a source of increasing
agricultural production in the rich Murray and Murrumbidgee valleys."

From http://tinyurl.com/2oz3au

Irrelevant to what is being discussed.

The pumping station at Jindabyne contributes to
that movement of water, and has no other purpose.

Wrong,

As you've sunk to personal abuse, I have nothing more to say.

Thanks for running the white flag up so enthusiastically.

On 5/19/2016 10:28 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/05/16 21:13, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
En el artÃ*culo , Chris Hogg
escribió:

I'll leave
it to AnthonyL to work out how much of Wales that would cover!

I think the term would be "a metric ****load".

I did work out that if Loch Ness could be raised 500 feet, and filled
with water, it would supply Britain for the whole winter, and you could
use solar panels to recharge it in summer.

Of course 10 nuclear power stations would be a lot cheaper. And far less
dangerous.



That scheme does have the advantage of being hundreds of miles away from
most of us, though!

(Not that I worried about working 100 yards away from an operating NPS
for best part of 20 years).

On 5/18/2016 9:40 PM, Huge wrote:
On 2016-05-18, newshound wrote:
On 5/17/2016 7:53 PM, michael adams wrote:
"Mike Tomlinson" wrote in message
...

"This is because the two reservoirs are linked by one of Britain's biggest
post-war industrial projects: the Dinorwig pumped storage power station,
hidden within this mountain. It is effectively a monster battery: power is
stored by pumping water from Llyn Peris to Marchlyn Mawr at night, then
generated by letting it flow back down at times of peak demand"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05...tric_mountain/



You do realise of course that that project was initiated by Lefty**** Socialists ?


It was a license to print money. Which of course is why it was snapped
up by Americans when it was flogged off.

Except it was owned by Mitsui when I went round.



Can't actually find the ownership history, one web site says now Mitsui
and GDF-Suez, another says First Hydro which is a Joint Venture between
Mitsui and International Power. All the energy companies seem to play a
complicated hedging game these days.

I am pretty sure an American company bought it from National Grid Co.
back in the early days post privatisation.