Power stations burning bio mass

[swinny]

The only way we as a country can ever be self sufficient in electricity is with nuclear.

 

another one is what about utilizing water more? used to drive mills etc. an could be used to generate electricity

[skyhuck]

another one is what about utilizing water more? used to drive mills etc. an could be used to generate electricity

 

Did you not read the earlier posts???

[swinny]

Did you not read the earlier posts???

 

no... sort of was distracted. will go back

[swinny]

maybe should have elabourated more then. instead of burning all this stuff, pumping loads of crap into atmosphere, putting strain on trees with biomass supply, also not wasting fossil fuels. bringing in pests and disease via imports... recent ash disease etc...

 

utilize water, we have plentyfull supply no crap going into atmosphere

[renewablejohn]

Did you not read the earlier posts???

 

Yes I did read the earlier posts and there factually incorrect. Its a myth that you only need a high head to generate electric. The big expansion in hydro electric is occurring in low head vortex schemes with heads less than 5 mtrs which can be found throughout England.

[renewablejohn]

 

If we exclude Wales and Scotland, because they are hilly and England already receives hydro power from them, then given an area of 130,396km2 an average fall to sea of 110 metres and average rainfall of 1 metre then dividing energy by seconds in the year I make that an average power of 4.45GW, about a tenth of what we consume on a cold day. Worse this assumes you can intercept all the rainfall on its way to the sea when over half evaporates.

 

I'm not knocking renewables but hydro power has cost limits too. It makes sense to have as high a fall as possible because the energy is related to mass time height(fall) time gravity. If you halve the fall then you have to double the mass to get the same output. It will be appreciated that a structure that intercepts twice the mass of water is going to have to be bigger, costs of "things" are roughly in proportion to their size, all other things being equal, so a MW hydropower device is going to cost more as the fall decreases.

 

I would dispute most of this. Just taking the seven barrage as an example of just one river the output is predicted to be upto 15GW depending on which barrage scheme you choose. With current flooding as experienced in the last couple of years more Thames barrier type schemes will be proposed on our major rivers with power generation incorporated within the design.

[openspaceman]

I would dispute most of this. Just taking the seven barrage as an example of just one river the output is predicted to be upto 15GW depending on which barrage scheme you choose.

 

What is there to dispute? I didn't say low head didn't work I said that costs goes up with the mass of water that has to pass through the device(s) and to get the same power out you have to pass more water on the lower head device.

 

Barrages do work, Rance is the example, but there are also environmental costs.

 

The small water mills for flour and early industial use were in the orders of kW at most. The average household consumes more than one of these outputs.

[difflock]

Dammn you Catweasel!!

I were gonna say that, about the energy generation/consumption of an old flour mill/corn mill, being very modest.

There is also the issue of seasonal fluctation in water supply.

I suppose, however, this reasonably matched the harvesting of the crops.

Plus the mill only run perhaps 8 out of 24 hours, and def not on a Sunday, with the head-water being held back in the mill pond, to meet the days demand.

So not every water mill site is suitable for reasonable 24/7 power generation.

There was also a massive amount of physically onerous maintenance of the water ways involved, keeping trash out of the system etc etc.

We used to run 3 or 4 Blakes hydrorams when I was growing up.

It could be a proper pain keeping them running/unclogged.

Nuclear fusion is our only hope.

Fingers crossed.

[hedgesparrow]

What is there to dispute? I didn't say low head didn't work I said that costs goes up with the mass of water that has to pass through the device(s) and to get the same power out you have to pass more water on the lower head device.

 

Barrages do work, Rance is the example, but there are also environmental costs.

 

The small water mills for flour and early industial use were in the orders of kW at most. The average household consumes more than one of these outputs.

 

i have to say that with what i have read on hydro power and the latest units that a small mill stream is capable of producing more than a kv of power per hour. i wanted to find out what some of the mill races round here could produce i di have the formula to do it it was width of stream x depth x speed last bit was how to work out speed without having a knot meter. but water is there harness it not just let if flow out to sea doing nothing apart from the nature side of things. what would the cost be for a small hydro power unit for a mill stream. has to be as cheap as solar and far cheaper than wind. as for nuke power. rather use something else.

[openspaceman]

We used to run 3 or 4 Blakes hydrorams when I was growing up.

It could be a proper pain keeping them running/unclogged.

Nuclear fusion is our only hope.

Fingers crossed.

 

We had two rams at the place I worked for 20 years, to pump water into the 1700 gallon loft tanks, lovely rhythmic ticking, as our were spring sourced I don't remember issues with clogging, just had to restart them after a dry period. They were abandoned after cars were burned out in the car park 1/2 mile away and contaminated the water. I never did figure out how their conversion of the flow to head worked out as a percentage of the energy available.