Policies:
Biofuels Production as Critical Infrastructure
Economists, even those most prejudiced in favouring private endeavour and individualism while being in general hostile toward government, recognise (if grudgingly) that spending on infrastructure is something legitimate for governments to do.
What is infrastructure really?
Transportation comes readily to mind — such things as bridges and tunnels, roads and rails, but also mass transit in cities in whatever form that takes. ..While many people equate infrastructure with built structures, nonetheless mass transit may mean a fleet of buses or of railcars, not merely the road or rails these travel on, whether underground or on it. ..Similarly, the vehicle fleet of the postal service ought to qualify as infrastructure.
Water and sewer also come to mind, usually using pipes, as does provision of natural gas. ..So also is distribution of liquid fuels part of a community’s infrastructure, though not typically thought of in this way — not until some transport interruption results in ‘sold out‘ signs proliferating. ..Or perhaps rationing has been put in place in order to allocate a limited supply (as may happen due to some calamity).
Then there are other useful facilities such as electricity and telecommunications. ..Nothing like the electricity going out, or of a cellular phone signal to disappear, to bring home the critical importance of these services. ..Not to mention the internet, something once quaintly referred to as “the digital highway”, a name redolent of public ownership.
Various of the above may be provided ‘for profit’ or by a public body ‘at cost.’ ..Some things such as highways are considered to be of general benefit to all, directly or indirectly, and thus often free of user charges as such. ..These may be funded by government wholly from general revenues, else with some charges or specific taxes related to the service, such as vehicle registration fees and fuel taxes. ..Street lighting and sidewalks are other examples of things felt to be of general benefit to all.
Climate change
Surely, another thing that affects everyone is the prospect of changing climates, and as such any measures taken in regards to this must be a matter of general concern and application. ..Reducing or eliminating use of fossil fuels warrants a societal response. ..While a ‘carbon tax’ on fossil fuel use in order to reduce individuals’ usage may be helpful, it is clearly an inadequate measure. While a carbon tax might work as applied to industry, it is not going to as applied to households.
Biofuels instead…
Replacing fossil fuels in transportation with biofuels is a far stronger response. ..It is a meaningful societal response, whereas a ‘carbon tax’ is a weak one that impacts some individuals far more than others. ..Considering how cold much of Canada is much of the year, it seems very perverse to tax home heating fuels, which a ‘carbon tax’ does. ..Surely, we can be smarter than that. ..Surely, we can take a broader approach than the- narrow individualism of a ‘carbon tax’ -on fossil fuels (whose stated aim is reducing CO2 emissions).
Realistically, having hybrid vehicles equipped with EC engines (external combustion) would create an environment where biofuel usage would soar, since a wide range of fuels may be burnt in with such engines, exterior to them. ..The automotive companies should long since have come up with EC engines, yet have not. ..After all, this technology is well~known and merely needs to be adapted to mass production for road vehicles.
See also this magazine article.. https://www.onlynaturalenergy.com/green-fuels-for-several-types-of-engines/
So in order to ensure we have them sooner than later, I suggest setting a deadline after which all hybrid vehicles must be equipped with an EC engine, and that engine must be of Canadian manufacture. ..The year 2027 seems like a good enough lead time for companies here to be able to produce EC engines in quantity. ..[But don’t expect the current federal government to even consider it, because Justin T and his merry band of meeklings are too wed to electric road vehicles.]
{note: That was written long before the 2021 election was called (needlessly, for the mandate could have run into 2023). Yet another display of M. Trudeau’s very poor judgement…Ye gods, he even appointed a Gov-Gen who could not speak French!..}
A good way to get started would be to have all new postal delivery vehicles be hybrids sporting EC engines. ..Since these are used in all urban settings, it would mean the purchasing of biofuels would be similarly widespread, and biofuel production would naturally become so, too. ..Transit buses would be another good target for EC engines. __{update: Instead, hundreds of millions are gifted to various tansit systems to acquire battery electric buses — but who will pay for replacement batteries when that change is needed some years hence?}
|||. Also, having all railway locomotives equipped with EC engines would be a significant step, and since they are neither limited by weight or size of such engines plus condensers for the working fluid, this transition could be faster. If need be, the condenser may be on a separate railcar permanently attached to the locomotive. ..Fuel is a major expense for railways, often 2nd only to wages as an operating expense, and some types of biofuels could be cheaper than diesel. So forcing the use of biofuels would not only create a significant market for them as well as reducing fossil CO2 emissions by a significant amount. ..see page: Fossil Fuel Reduction – Railways.||
Critical infrastructure
In order to substantially replace fossil fuels with biofuels would require a huge production of them. ..Here is where their production should be considered critical infrastructure of general concern, and as such eligible for support from governments using their general revenues. ..After all, production of biofuels on a very large scale is also economic development that creates considerable employment and with it considerable tax revenues for governments. ..This wider perspective needs to be kept in mind.
Dedicated crops specifically for biofuel production may make use of land not now cropland: pasture, for instance. These crops usually are cut several times during the growing season giving much tonneage per acre. Such farms are typically smaller in size than average, so one result would be growth in the total number of farms.
As is well-known, more farm families create more business in nearby villages, and together this larger population in an area creates more business for the larger service centres as well: ..for the larger towns and small cities. ..This ‘knock~on effect’ may be significant. ..It is how rural development works for the benefit of a Province overall. ..Grow the base of rural population and villages and the whole pyramid of settlements — of larger centres, regional cities and major cities — grows with it. ..And who will argue against that?
Forget Electric Vehicles…
…as saving Earth from changing climates:
_First_ they are an inefficient use of electricity in replacing fossil fuels in transportation: for biofuels made using electrolysis move vehicles much farther per unit of electricity than will direct use of electricity to power vehicles — and, of course, other ways of making biofuels use much less electricity than does electrolysis; [see Green Gasoline]
_Second_ they are presently too expensive due to the lithium ion batteries most use, which are costly and require replacement after several years, which reduces the vehicle’s resale value; and
_Third_ say there was a massive switch to electric vehicles — where is all the electricity to power them supposed to come from?
update: _ It appears that solid electrolyte batteries are about to be in production vehicles in 2023, or so Toyota expects. ..These will give greater range per charge, perhaps several hundred kilometres, plus they may recharge quickly. … Toyota expects to be selling .maybe. a million such vehicles in 2025, which is not a large slice of the road vehicle market and clearly suggests the price of these vehicles will be high. ..Also, it remains to be seen if using only rapid recharging will shorten their service life.
Lastly:_ terrific as these batteries might be, a hybrid vehicle needs far fewer of them, and so equipped would have a new price tag that an all~electric vehicle would be unlikely to match. ..And remember, batteries are a reversible chemical reaction that is .slower. in very cold weather. ..The warmth from the engine in a hybrid is an advantage in winter.
Net:Zero Nonsense
Consider carefully what net:zero really means. …The core belief is that CO2 emissions attributable to human activity annually must be matched in equal measure by CO2 withdrawals from the air by human activity. (Indeed, some go farther and say withdrawals must be greater than emissions in order to draw down total CO2 in the atmosphere.) How did this drastic scenario come to be?
Academics have used computer modelling — which reflects the assumptions the researchers felt were credible — to arrive at a correlation of ‘cumulative aerial CO2’ with total CO2 emissions over the decades. But in recent years the total annual emissions are about 90% attributed to burning fossil fuels, so no surprise that ‘cumulative aerial CO2’ also correlates with emissions where the C in CO2 is fossil in origin.
So which CO2 stream should we pay attention to? _ Should it be total emissions… or those from use of fossil fuels? Either one in recent decades correlates with ‘cumulative aerial CO2’. However, the estimates for emissions in which the C is of fossil origin are rather more reliable than estimates of total CO2 emissions, which includes more guesswork in the data, and no doubt is missing some sources of such emissions. Either way, a huge reduction in use of fossil fuels is a must. “To be replaced by what?” is the question.
Those who believe all CO2 is similar in its effect regarding aerial levels of CO2 also embrace the notion of ‘net-zero’. Policies consistent with this include sans-C road vehicles, sans-C railways, and sans-C electricity production, among the more prominent ones.
Conversely, recognising a difference in effect when the C of CO2 being emitted is of biological origin (such as CO2 produced by a ferment), supports a different policy framework. To see why, let’s take a simple example:
In some places, Brasil the most prominent, the juice of sugar cane is fermented to produce ethanol, which is used as a fuel in cars there. The ferment itself releases almost as much by weight of CO2 as it does ethanol, then burning it as fuel releases more CO2. ..[Though ethanol is not a good enough engine fuel and something that is should instead by made,]
And where did the carbon in the sugar come from? From CO2 the plants took from the air — which is where all the carbon in plants comes from. .. So this bio C in emitted CO2 is simply returning to the air from whence it was taken earlier by the sugarcane plants. It is a cycling event, in contrast to CO2 where the C is of fossil origin and came from the ground, which is adding ‘new’ carbon to the air, so to speak.
Notice something very important- only part of the plant is being used in the ferment; ..only part of the C the plants took from the air gets returned there soon after. When biofuels made from annual plant growth will be replacing fossil fuels in a major way, then much less ‘new C’ will be in emitted CO2, and plants will be removing more CO2 from the air than the biofuels made of them emit. There will still be the same total of CO2 being emitted, but with much more biomass being grown, they will be removing much more than now.
As mentioned above, major use of biofuels has policy implications. Railways which aren’t electrified could run on biofuels instead of fossil diesel fuel; ..remote communities who now rely on electricity from generators powered by diesel engines, could instead use quieter turbine generators run on biofuels; ..and the road vehicle of choice would be a hybrid whose engine burns biofuel instead of gasoline, as most now do. ..As well, net-zero would then no longer make good sense, and most places would drop it as a goal.
Remember, when plants take CO2 out of the air, they use the C to create molecules and mainly polymers — starches, xylans, lignins, and so on. A certain amount of such polymer carbon does not end up back in the air as CO2. ..It is misleading to presume it all will.
In order to increase the amount of plant growth planet-wide, irrigation of semi-arid and sandy desert areas is indicated, growing “energy crops” to be made into biofuels, plants that grow 4m tall. A collateral benefit of such irrigation will be increased food production as well. ..Which will increase the amount of aerial CO2 being withdrawn annually . Likely then the curve of CO2 in the atmosphere will flatten or recede. …Who needs zero emissions?
Hybrid Vehicles Policy
What Governments Should Do
Hybrid road vehicles use less fuel per trip than other cars or delivery vans (or buses for that matter). So in order to reduce fossil fuel use, an obvious choice is to have many more hybrid vehicles and fewer non~hybrids on the roads. Policies to that end are easy to make. But there is more to this ….
Nobody likes air pollution. The images of Beijing wreathed in smoke will someday be an artifact of the past, just as images of major English cities wreathed in smoke are today. They’ve been cleaned up, and so too will all major Chinese cities. And none too soon for those who dwell therein. [Cities in India are similarly afflicted, but are less likely to be cleaned up anytime soon.]
Much of the problem stems from burning coal without good control of emissions. But no small contribution comes from the great many internal combustion (IC) engines in vehicles.
When authorities there do crack down on sources of air pollution, vehicle emissions will be one target, just as they have been in California, once their city dwellers got fed up with smog.
<<note:__ This item was written well before the covid 19 crisis caused lock downs and drastically reduced vehicular traffic in many cities. ..Residents of them have marvelled at the much cleaner air, delighting in it. Clean air can be usual, as this item shows.. >>
Hybrid vehicles use less fuel per kilometre travelled, largely because the combustion engine is not running continuously. ..For part of each journey (even for much of it) a hybrid vehicle runs on stored energy. Then when the engine is running, its output is split between the immediate needs of the vehicle and replenishing the energy store.
The first generation of hybrid vehicles feature an electric motor, electrical storage, and generation of electricity powered by an IC engine. Thus far they have been relatively expensive .(particularly if one factors in battery replacement) largely due the cost of the electrical store. ..Sales of them in consequence have been underwhelming.
Imagine what will happen when the electrical storage component is no longer so costly. This has been anticipated for many, many years. ..Someday it may happen, and proponents of all~electric cars will rejoice. ..Yet, it would actually advantage hybrids more, as they have fewer batteries on board.
Hybrid vehicles then might sell for little more than conventional autos, and given their superior fuel economy, could soon outsell conventional cars in most markets. ..Sales of transport fuels would soon decrease wherever more and more hybrids are in use. ..And since all major auto makers already produce hybrid vehicles, this transition should be rapid. ..Though they should have EC engines…..
External Combustion Engines
A change in hybrid cars that ought to occur is substitution of an external combustion (EC) engine for the IC ones. Several advantages would ensue.
EC engines are well suited to be in hybrid vehicles, where the engine is either running at full power or not at all. ..That EC engine will likely be a turbine, and turbines with condensers are fuel efficient at full load though do drop sharply in efficiency at partial loading.
The engine would be a closed cycle sort whose working fluid is condensed and returned to the boiler. ..A few decades back DuPont engineers invented an interesting engine that featured a rotating boiler with a rotating condenser as well. ..But the latter was air cooled and would be rather bulky for an engine of much output. .. It also is unsuited to some applications, such as a marine engine or water pump.
So the rotating boiler with a short condenser section (also rotating), which is cooled by a separate coolant going to a stationary radiator, is a more likely configuration. Several US Patents in the 1970s assigned to DuPont contain detailed descriptions. [see US Pat 3.613.368 especially] No doubt others have suitable engines as well.
EC engines cost less to make and the emissions are far better. External combustion is more complete, comparable to a fuel oil furnace, and so the emissions are much better than those of an IC engine.
Most people live in cities, and most cities have poor air quality even where it might not seem so. ..But look at particulates, especially the very small ones that people breath in — these are not good for anyone’s health. ..Thankfully, these may be largely avoided by use of EC engines in place of the current IC ones.
Thus, for air pollution control alone, authorities in many places will heavily favour hybrids with EC engines ..once they are available. Cleaner air means better health for urban dwellers as well, so where gov’t provides much of the health care, this is an additional reason to strongly favour EC engines in vehicles.
It is also good news for monuments and historical buildings that suffer damage from corrosive emissions of today’s vehicles, places like Athens in Greece and the tourists who flock there.
EC engines also have another advantage very attractive to many national governments: they are fuel flexible and so can use .locally made. fuels, which would often mean lessening dependence on imported fuels or imported crude petroleum. ..For some countries it may mean a welcome improvement in the balance of payments. ..Moreover, some of those fuels should be cheaper than today’s gasolines.
A ‘green fuels’ industry would thrive, mostly produced by ferments of biomass. ..Such an industry creates a good many jobs, and job creation boosts an economy, something politicians like to boast about, whether or not they had much to do with it.
Note:_ In 2010 Jaguar had a turbine-electric car (five protoypes actually) but these were using micro gas turbines, rather than the closed loop type mentioned above. ..The micro turbines were by the Bladon company of England, who produce turbine gensets to provide electricity. ..These can readily use biofuels.
Government Action
Of course, all~electric vehicles are the supposed future, but this rather depends on how the electricity is produced. ..Much is still produced by burning fossil fuels. In respect of greenhouse gas production, hybrid vehicles running on renewable fuel seem a better option.
Hybrid electric vehicles don’t require so extensive a network of electrical charging stations, which is critical infrastructure for an all~electric vehicles future. ..Nor would it be wise to depend overly on all~electric vehicles, for whenever the electrical grid goes down over an extensive area, the all~electrics are going to run out of charge. Hybrids don’t.
{ update_ Much of the Atlantic Canada region was without electricity for more than a week in mid 2022 due to a severe tropical storm downing much of the electrical grid. Despite this, the current federal gov’t appears steadfast in wanting all~electric vehicles to populate our highways within a few years.}
Governments can take action to promote or foster hybrids having EC engines. The point is to distinguish them from hybrids with IC engines, rather than hybrids in general relative to non~hybrids. ..One way would be through vehicle registration, which is typically an annual thing. ..The fee for registering a hybrid with an IC engine could be made substantially higher than for one with an EC engine.
Or, more drastically, ones with IC engines built after a certain date, like after the end of next year could not be registered at all! ..Thereafter, except for older ones, a hybrid would have to have an EC engine.
For the reasons given above, it is justifiable to do this, to force adoption of EC engines in these vehicles. ..And the more jurisdictions that do this, the more focussed the automobile companies will need be to comply — else lose market share.
Storage other than batteries
The electrical route is not the only approach. In 2013 Peugeot exhibited a prototype car in Geneva that used pressurised nitrogen gas as an energy store, with hydraulic fluid as the means of pressurising it.
Dynamic braking created pressure in the hydraulic line. That fluid also ran an hydraulic motor to later assist in moving the vehicle. ..An IC engine provided the base power while the hydraulic motor added a boost when needed. ..So the IC engine could be smaller since it did not need to be sized for peak power output.
Another choice would be to have the combustion engine run an hydraulic pump directly, its output split between going into storage or going to one or more hydraulic motors powering the wheels. ..This likely is especially suited to transit buses which stop frequently and can be caught in stop and go urban traffic.* ..Electrical storage so far involves rather heavy batteries, so that an hydraulic system would be less weight overall (a reasonable guess).
While the prototype lived up to its designed capacity, with much better fuel economy achieved, much development work was still needed to create a production model within price parameters. ..It appears the auto maker felt this would be a niche product and was looking for a partner to share the development costs. But unable to find one, Peugeot has set the project aside for now. [However, Peugeot and Chrysler are to combine in early 2021, so perhaps a production model might come of it.]
(*.. I might add that some transit buses have used a large flywheel to capture the energy of dynamic braking, though it doesn’t seem to have caught on.)
CO2 “Capture & Storage”
An engineering approach results in ‘Carbon’ Capture and Storage projects that are typically conceived on a large scale and run to hundreds of millions of dollars in cost. …One in Norway completed in 2012 cost one billion US$ or more, while one opened two years’ later in Saskatchewan was about as costly. ..At about that same time the one in Mongstad Norway was abandoned, as being a costly mistake. Very sensible decision, that. Clearly, neither of these should ever have been built!
Naturally:
Yet, it is also possible to conceive instead of a multiplicity of “carbon capture” projects small in scale that in total would remove just as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The engineering approach is somewhat peculiar in that hitherto what has been involved is storage of the carbon dioxide as a liquid, when it is obvious that it would be more efficient to store carbon in some denser form — such as in a polymer. But engineers for some reason don’t think in this way, instead focusing on carbon dioxide itself.
Even weirder, they usually start with carbon dioxide in flue gas, which means it is hot, dilute, and comes with unwanted other stuff. ..So considerable effort is required to separate, and then cool, the carbon dioxide gas and place it under great pressure so it becomes a liquid. $$$
A newer concept is to take CO2 directly from the air in some mechanical manner, which seems an odd thing to do considering that plants take carbon dioxide from the air in order to build their tissues. ..Why badly imitate what nature already does? ..Strange, very strange, to have such an odd perspective.
More growing plants remove more CO2
Pretty obviously, an increase in the amount of plant growth annually, the more CO2 will be removed each year from the air. …Likely the best target for this is any semi~arid area which can be irrigated. ..The Sahel band of land in Africa is one example, the southern prairies in Saskatchewan and Alberta is another. And there are a good many other examples around the world.
Any place where irrigation water can be provided is an obvious candidate. Less obvious is what sort of plants to grow. ..Best would be trees or shrubs, fruit or berry crops perhaps, orchards in other words. ..Why? Because the irrigation water may be provided well below the roots of most ground plants right to the plants one wants to see growing. ..And there is less loss through evaporation, so more ground may be irrigated for any given amount of water available.
Another good choice would be some sort of perennial with deep roots whose top growth would be harvested in order to be made into a biofuel – a good way to displace using fossil fuels. ..So this could be a solid fuel such as pellets, or a liquid to be used as a fuel, this being a fermentation product most likely. [see item Green Engine Fuels on this site.]
It would be reasonable to make a large capital investment to set up irrigation infrastructure in order to provide water at little cost to its users. And this might involve moving that water a long distance from a typically wet area to a semi~arid one.
What Does It Matter Where?
The atmosphere is planet-wide, and there are millions of point sources of emissions of CO2 into it. It is a matter of complete indifference where the CO2 that is to be kept from entering the atmosphere comes from. Any stoppage of an emission, no matter where, is good. Taking CO2 from flue gas is simply idiotic, because doing so is expensive.
Compare that cost of “capturing” the CO2 with doing so from the emissions of a fermenter producing beer or wine. There the CO2 is practically pure and dense and warm. How much does flue gas capture cost to get CO2 in the same condition? Plenty! _Why even consider doing that? And yet there are hundreds of engineering journal articles about doing so. Wasted efforts.
Even stranger….. The Drax power station in the UK, which was once the largest coal~fired plant they had, though in late 2020 became entirely fueled by wood pellets (most of them imported from Alabama in the USA), is to have a carbon dioxide capture scheme from its flue gases. ..Drax management will have to get permissions to do so from the UK government in order to obtain subsidies, a process that is expected to run into 2023. ..One can only hope they get refused on the grounds this is an exceedingly stupid thing to do.
Instead of spending a great deal to capture CO2 from their chimney stacks, they could invest in fermenters to make biofuels and obtain CO2 as by~product.
And if they want to send it down to the depths of the North Sea where under immense pressure it should stay dissolved in that water a long, long time… well at least the cost of that has been lessened considerably by starting from fermenters instead of chimneys.
The boreal forest as storage?
Certain environmentalists argue that the northern forests in Canada, the ‘boreal’ forest, parts of which catch fire every summer due to lightning strikes, is a huge store of carbon and must be preserved for the good of the planet: ..which means, not logged. ..For, so the argument goes, harvested trees sooner or later wind up as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and thus contribute to the greenhouse warming effect.
If the trees are turned into paper, perhaps they have a point, though a largish fraction of paper does not get broken down for many years, even a great many years. ..However, the argument is very weak when the logs become lumber used to construct such long~lasting structures as the frames and roofs of houses.
Consider also that once an area is logged, new trees begin to grow in their place, and since this growing biomass is formed by taking carbon dioxide out of the air, then over the years and decades to come it is storing carbon. ..Adding that to the carbon stored in the lumber from the harvested trees this new growth is replacing means the total carbon stored will soon be greater than if no logging had occurred. ..’Preserving‘ the boreal forest (as certain environmentalists advocate) is not the best choice when it comes to carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
But as Tim Flannery, a well respected Aussie, wrote in his 2015 book The Weather Makers: _ “Mature forests don’t take in much CO2 for they are in balance, releasing CO2 as old vegetation rots, then absorbing it as the new grows. ..For this reason the world’s largest forests — the coniferous forests of Siberia and Canada — and the tropical rain forests, are not good carbon sinks but new vigorously growing forests are.” (p32).
___A forest is, of course, simply alot of individual trees. A large number of private woodlots may also comprise a forest, as in Scandinavia as instance. ..Similarly, a multiplicity of other smallish stores of carbon may also amount to a large total.
Shells are good
The shells of many sea creatures are comprised calcium carbonate and chitin, this latter a polymer somewhat like cellulose. It is a structural part of the creature’s hard shell and runs to circa forty percent carbon, while the Ca carbonate is only twelve percent. ..Shells of dead creatures tend to accumulate, a process that may be helped along by humans. Such shells are a store of carbon that came from carbon dioxide dissolved in seawater.
Say a sea farmer working on a small scale grows molluscs or barnacles, or some such creatures that have hard shells comprised of chitin and Ca carbonate. Say these are harvested for their food value, to be consumed directly or indirectly by humans. Gooseneck barnacles, as an example, could be harvested, killed, and dropt in ponds of crayfish or lobsters or crabs, for them to consume. These then get harvested, processed, and sold as human food. Or the barnacles themselves could be eaten as various people do the gooseneck type — popular in Portugal apparently.
Multiply these farmers by the tens or hundreds of thousands, if not by many millions worldwide, and all those discarded shells represent a large store of carbon. In order to assure that they are stored, and also to offer an incentive for such farming, the shells could be purchased for dumping into deep areas of the ocean. Sale of carbon credits could pay the costs of those buying and dumping the shells.
As well, some shells could be broken up and used in landscaping, others perhaps cemented to, or into, the face of concrete blocks or bricks during their manufacture, to give a decorative face. And also earn carbon credits!
Elephant statue:
Certainly, this approach is more sane than ‘capturing’ carbon dioxide from flue gases. ..In order to acknowledge the ridiculousness of that approach, perhaps a statue of a white elephant could be erected as a roadside attraction at the outskirts of Estevan, Saskatchewan where an expensive such facility has been built. ..It would remind people to take a balanced view about such engineering projects.
Steady Wind Electricity
Intro:__ Wind-generated electricity is typically sold to an electrical utility under a multi~year contract that is heavily in favour of the windpower company. ..Usually, the buyer must accept whatever amount is being produced, when it is being produced by the wind turbines, with no minimum specified. ..In short, there is no penalty to the windpower company for failure to supply a reasonable amount of electricity. Contracts running twenty years or more are usual.
Purchased by an electrical utility
Wind-generated electricity is being purchased by electrical utilities largely for the favourable image they expect this creates with their customers in respect to meeting some environmental objective. ..It is an exercise in public relations. Cost effective it is not — for there are extra expenses incurred by the utility besides the contracted price for the electricity, which itself may be somewhat high.
The cost of purchased wind~generated electricity really should be entered on the books of a public utility in two separate accounts: _one part as a cost of purchased power similar to reliable power obtained from some other outside source, _and the remainder as an expense charged to a public relations account, to a public image account, call it what you will.
This would reflect the actual situation and be an honest rendering of this expense on the public accounts of the utility. ..Of course, the contracted price itself need not be disclosed, though the amount charged to wind power purchases in a public image account would give some indication of it.
Erratic winds:___ Wind is erratic, and at times any breeze is barely able to make a windmill mill. ..As an example of this, the electrical utility New Brunswick Power has a 25 year contract with a windpower producer for circa 300 Mw of electricity, but in the final week of 2017 (during a cold snap with little wind) it was only receiving some 6 Mw.
This was at a time of peak demand for electricity from its customers, which usually comes on the coldest days of winter. ..Obviously, the utility needs back~up power equal to the contracted amount from a windpower company, because it simply cannot rely on always getting any from it.
Typically, on an annual basis in terms of kWh produced, a wind turbine can provide maybe 40% of its maximum capacity though frequently less. It depends on the particular site and will vary from year to year.
The shortfall is not very predictable as to size or duration on a week to week basis, which means the buyer cannot know when the shortfall will occur, cannot plan for it more than a few hours or days ahead.
An Intermediary
Conceptually, intermediation is simple: ..the company buys an erratic and unreliable supply of electricity from a windpower producer, and provides a fairly steady supply of electricity to its customer, an electrical utility. Note that the company itself may be using a significant amount of the erratic electricity so purchased –more on this in Flexible Windpower. <<not yet written.>>
This intermediary function may be done in several ways.
The easiest to comprehend is having a large storage capacity of chemical batteries into which excess electricity goes, and from which it is later withdrawn. ..As batteries for this use are not limited by weight or size, many types that would never be used where such considerations matter may be used here.
It is like having many re~chargeable batteries on a grand scale: ..as by using lead acid batteries, each larger individually than are found in motor vehicles, and multiplying their number hugely.
Such batteries work on a reversible chemical reaction, of which there are several types. ..There is little point in going into detail here, except for this: ..In some cases the chemicals need not be confined to each battery itself, but may flow in and out of it. ..This means the working fluid or fluids move between tanks, so fewer electrodes and their associated apparatus are needed. _[note: the word fluid here may mean a gas — one of the details not gone into.]
Gas turbine:
Likely this option has already occurred to many readers. A gas turbine may be quickly brought online to produce electricity that then allows the combination of erratic wind turbine output plus gas turbine output to be a steady supply of electricity to the utility as customer.
While fossil natural gas is the usual fuel used, other gas or liquid fuels may be burnt. In particular these could come from an electrolysis of organic acids made from annual plantstuffs by fermentation. ..Obviously, such gases or liquids may be stored for later use, whereas electricity itself cannot. ..A gas turbine run on non~fossil fuels is a ‘green’ option, just as is the windpower it complements.
Hydraulics:
Though also easy to comprehend, this might strike the reader as a bit odd. Instead of a windmill attached to an AC electricity generator (alternator), a combination generally called a wind turbine, there are several advantages to instead having the windmill shaft coupled to an hydraulic pump, with electricity then produced indirectly.
One advantage is much less weight at the top of the mill since the pump is lighter than a wind turbine’s combination of AC generator and the gearing needed to produce a regular 3600 rpm so it provides alternating current at 60 cycles per second. ..That gearing must be strong enough to absorb the shocks and vibrations that buffeting winds impart to the windmill’s shaft, and this makes the gearing large and heavy.
By contrast, an hydraulic system can absorb these more readily, heavy gearing not required. Also, the pump is robust and needs less frequent maintenance than a wind turbine. As well, any hydraulic motor may be at ground level, which is far more convenient for maintenance.
Another advantage of the hydraulic approach is its ability to store pressurised fluid in a reservoir tank or tanks. ..If an hydraulic motor is turning an electricity generator, then such a reservoir allows smoother output of electricity, and better timing, producing more when more is needed and less when it is not.
Where system design wants a large capacity of stored fluid, hydraulic oil would not usually be a good choice. ..Here a pressurised gas, or water lifted to a height, should be considered. ..As instance, the gas might be added to an underground storage cavern, increasing the pressure of the gas already in it. ..Withdrawn gas could then run a turbine coupled to an electricity generator, with or without some fuel being burnt in it to increase the pressure.
Regarding water as storage, consider an existing low~head hydroelectric dam where a windmill, or several such, are erected on nearby higher ground. ..An hydraulic motor running a water pump directly below the dam would lift water back up into the dam’s reservoir. ..Such pumping may be quite erratic while the output of the dam’s generators is very regular. ..It would increase the annual output of that generator above what it otherwise would be. This becomes scheduled electricity from erratic and unreliable windpower.
Since any of these ways can channel relatively steady electricity to an electrical utility, none should be purchasing an erratic and unreliable supply. ..Leave that up to an intermediary whose electricity still will be mostly from wind and thus meet a ‘green’ objective in respect of public image for the utility.