On Thursday, high winds allowed Denmark to meet all of its electricity needs, with plenty to spare for neighboring countries.
Credit: NOVA PBS / YouTube
On a particularly windy day (last Thursday), the country of Denmark was able to meet its domestic electricity demand and even export power to Norway, Germany, and Sweden thanks to its wind farms. As The Guardian reports, Denmark found itself producing 116% of its national electricity needs from wind turbines, and by 3 AM the next morning (Friday), when electricity demand dropped, the figure had risen to 140%.
80% of the power surplus was shared equally between Germany and Norway, which can store it in hydropower systems for later use. Lucky Sweden received the remaining fifth of excess power.
Said Oliver Joy, a spokesman for trade body the European Wind Energy Association:
“It shows that a world powered 100% by renewable energy is no fantasy. Wind energy and renewables can be a solution to decarbonization – and also security of supply at times of high demand.”
As you can see below, figures from the Danish transmission systems operator, emergent.dk, which provides a minute-by-minute account of renewable power in the nation grid, showed that Denmark’s wind farms weren’t even operating at their full 4.8GW capacity.
Oh good - another image too big to see. Bet it was a good one too.
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts
How does that work? Do they pump water up above some kind of water turbine then when the power is needed they release it back down through the turbine? yeah, I could look it up but I gotta go now.
Commissioned in 1963, Ffestiniog Power Station was the UK's first major pumped storage power facility. Although of an older generation to those at Dinorwig, Ffestiniog's four generating units are still capable of achieving a combined output of 360MW of electricity - enough to supply the entire power needs of North Wales for several hours.
The Generation Cycle begins at Llyn Stwlan - Ffestiniog's upper reservoir. Large screens inside the intake towers are opened to activate the high-pressure downflow.
27 cubic metres of water per second are discharged through two high-pressure shafts (each 200 metres in depth), which are connected to four concrete-lined tunnels. Steel penstocks then direct the discharge into the station via inlet pipes and valves to start generation.
Water is captured in Tan-y-Grisiau and pumped back to Llyn Stwlan, usually overnight, to complete the cycle.
This cross-section schematic details the key components of the Ffestiniog pump storage layout.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
For anyone who's interested, here's a good article on the challenges and possible solutions involved in integrating more wind and solar (a.k.a. variable renewable energy, or VRE) into the existing power grid.
I'm starting to really like vox.com for their occasional long (much too long to quote in full), thorough waonksplanatory articles like this.
ftfy
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts