Some English guy tinkering in his shed has come up with a very useful way of storing energy using liquid air, and releasing it on demand. This, of course, addresses one of the main problems with windmills, i.e. they are never turning when you want maximum output from them and have to be turned off if the wind is too strong when demand for electricity is low.
It would take quite a bit of investment in infrastructure to make this happen, but, all the pollies seems so keen on investing in infrastructure! 😦
It would also make a good petrol substitute and there would be no need for expensive and cumbersome electric cars.
http://news.sky.com/story/991949/liquid-air-could-be-the-fuel-of-the-future
Boadicea's Chariot 
Better yet let’s utilise all the hot air spouted out by politicians world wide. more than enough power and never ending it seems.
Not sure that is such a good idea, given the orifice that most politicians use for talking through! 🙂
I love some of the comments. This is my favourite. I really don’t know if he was ‘avin a larf’!
‘So let me get this straight………..Companies are going to rip off our global air supply, buy just helping themselves to it free of charge, then they are going to sell it back to us as power. Not to mention there simply is’nt enough air in the earths atmosphere for this technology to coexist with our need to breath it. We would all suffocate. This whole idea should be banned immediately. No one has the right to monopolise our global air supply and no government has the power the sanction it’s abuse . Believe me this is not just an issue for the environmental hippies to complain about. This is an issue that we should all be very worried about. These companies need to be told that this technology simply is’nt going to be allowed.’
Sipu. 😀
God I wish I had listened more in physics!
Someone please ratify for me-
As I understand it, energy would be required to liquefy the air to below critical temperature, but once stored in an insulated pressure tank there would be no need to expend energy to keep it thus?
Release of pressure = release of energy for immediate use. eg fed into the grid.
CO: Yes you have it. Typically liquid gases are stored in vacuum dewars in order to reduce evaporation losses and storage pressure. The compression and cooling of the air to it’s liquifaction point takes a lot of energy, and much more is required to extract the latent heat of evaporation to produce a liquid (together more energy than one can recover from the use of the evaporating and expanding gas) but that’s not an issue if the energy generated by the windmill is otherwise wasted (or the mill is shut down due to lack of immediate demand).
The economics of producing liquified gases is well understood, liquid Nitrogen is readily available commercially for about $0.30 per pound (cheaper than gasoline).
Sipu, I’m really worried now! Should I dash out tomorrow to buy a big plastic bubble to keep “my” air supply in? Thanks for the laugh, anyway.
LW I had hoped you were around! Nothing like an engineer! Thanks.
So it really does sound as thought it has distinct possibilities.
Now then, if it is feasible both technically and economically can I presume that each field of windmills would need a tank rather than each windmill? I can’t see that being very economic.
How big would those tanks have to be? I suppose in beauty spots they could be put underground but at vast expense.
Why I ask is that the house I just have sold on Milford Sound is only 2 miles from an old refinery which they converted for storage of LNG delivered by tanker. These are bloody HUGE about 120′ or so high out on a headland, positively dominated the landscape of the sound. Not that it was a big issue as there were already 3 refineries in view. Somehow the industrial landscape sort of blended with the sound and the shipping was fascinating to watch, the Irish Ferry docked just opposite my windows.
I can imagine that such structures on such a scale all over beauty spots already despoiled by windmills would get the general populace going into a positive froth! (Unless their power bills halved!!!)
Christina: There is not necessarily any need for any tanks to be near the windmills. They could be anywhere. It depends if you use the windmill energy directly for compressing and liquefying the gas, or whether you generate electricity, transmit that some where else, then use that to liquefy the gas. It takes a huge amount of energy to liquefy a gas, and when the gas is evaporated, it absorbs a lot of energy from its surroundings. The expansion of the gas is what does the work.
Feeg thank you for your answer.
Ah! So the tanks could be in some non controversial area, all the better. Mind you if all those windmills were going full tilt in storms would the existing lines be able to cope with the energy generated? Resistance etc? One has visions of horror story fry ups! (Must have watched too many bad movies!)
I do wish these articles were more explanatory, I suppose the idiots writing them don’t know enough themselves to fully understand it. I guess what I am asking is would our current energy supply infrastructure be up to the job, obviously with the addition of tanks and processing equipment, but what else? I can see the S.O.B. energy companies wriggling mightily to increase their profits one more time at the expense of the customers as is their usual wont!!
Feeg very valid point, never thought of that 🙂
Oo, goody! The Bloody C**nt will probably stick ginormous tanks alongside to his 500 ft. windmills in the field next door. 😦
Thought you were moving?
Well, yes, we were! Then we thought the legal challenge to the C**nt would succeed; now we’re not so sure and are house-hunting again!
How about you?
CO: Re Windmills in storms. They are shut down when the wind speed exceeds about 30 mph (safety reasons) and do not run at all when the wind is less than about 10 mph. As a result they make reasonable power only for limited periods and unfortunately not usually when it is immediately required. Some form of energy storage is a prerequisite for any economic operation. I’m not convinced that the liquid air idea will make them truly feasible but it is better than other storage ideas.
Regarding the power handling capacity of the infrastructure, the grid can easily handle all the power that the windfarms produce and maybe a hundred times more, all the windmills in Germany (which has more than any other country) do not produce the output of a single conventional power station even when running full tilt. Alternate energy sources like wind, solar or tidal will never be the answer to base power generation. There is only one solution and we all know what it is, someone has to grasp the nuclear nettle and get on with it, or it’s back to the middle ages for us all.
Janus: It would probably make good sense to bury the tanks (insulation) so at least they should not be an eyesore. The giant reciprocating air motors being used to drive generators might prove a little troublesome on quiet evenings. 🙂
LW: I think there are gas turbines that can run of the expansion of liquid air, so noise at such sites should not be a problem. A reciprocating engine would make more sense for motor vehicles because of torque and acceleration characteristics..
FEEG: Not the gentle rumble of reciprocation but the ear splitting scream of turbines then?
I’m just putting the “wind” up Mr. Janus! 🙂
All very interesting and thanks to all for the explanations and amplifications.
Janus, re house. We still have it for sale, had several offers but spousal unit refused to drop the price that far. I think that he does not like having nowhere to move too. So I’m using the money from Wales to buy another house locally which will do either as a rental or for us , if as and when we finally get to sell this one.
Spousal unit is not ‘good at moving’ and that is the understatement of the century!
🙂
Thought you might be, but just in case. BTW, static gas turbines do not really scream, just whine a bit, on the other hand, the low frequency noise from a windmill IS health-threatening! 🙂