I procrastinate studying actual engineering by watching real engineer videos.

@Justin73791

2 күн бұрын

This is the way.

@XMarkxyz

2 күн бұрын

Same brother

@fnapis

2 күн бұрын

Have you tried to study real engineering istead of actual engineering?

@kysco

2 күн бұрын

@@fnapis That's a dangerous path. You could become another "free energy water powered car modder" in youtube, due to lack of thermodinamics and basic physics knowledge...

@CAxPH

2 күн бұрын

This makes you a Real Engineer

Wind turbine service technician here, actually modern machines doesnt need to achieve 1500-1800 rpm to produce power, thanks to the converter system its possible to start producing usable power as low as around 900-1000 rpm (about 3.5 / 4 m/s of wind on 150m diameter machines at max blade pitch angle). The way its done is simply to lower the voltage frequency on the generator side of the converters (while keeping 50/60Hz on the grid side). The 1500-1800 range is now more of a "max power" range if the wind speed is high enough (4.2MW for a Vestas V150 MK3E for example, at about 11m/s). About the maintenance on gearboxes in fact there is not really much to do most of the time, as soon as the service is correctly done (filter changes, oil levels) they can last more than the 7 years you are speaking without any issues. Of course gearboxes problems are possible, but they are pretty rare compared to the quantity of machines.

@xDUnPr3diCtabl3

2 күн бұрын

Thank you for sharing.

@coachbrandon01

2 күн бұрын

Do you remember the old farm windmills that were multi-functional, and lasted for decades? The power shaft would go from the blades, through 2 bevel gears, all of the way down to the ground level, THEN, that power was used, or converted, at the ground level. That old method seems like it would be WAY more efficient, and practical. As opposed to having ALL of the equipment on top of a 300 foot pole.

@NickTaylorRickPowers

2 күн бұрын

Is the parachute incase of fire thing real ?

@furripupau

2 күн бұрын

@@coachbrandon01 That would require a lot more weight, a lot more rotating mass, and bevel gears are less efficient than spur gears.

@Your_Paramour

2 күн бұрын

@@coachbrandon01 You think it's more practical and efficient to have two bevel gears dealing with extremely high torque, connected to a shaft that's potentially 150m long going into a gearbox and generator unit?

Currently working on turbines that are 20+ years old. Sure bearings and gearboxes go bad but these things crank out energy like it’s going out of style. And modern turbines are making power from 750rpm all the way up to 1500+ so the wind window is much wider than they used to be. Even the old ones I work on make power at 820rpm. In fact we normally are flagged for making too much and have to shut some towers off on high wind days.

@triage2962

Күн бұрын

Yes it can put out energy at 750 rpm but if it runs 80% at 750 rpm it is not efficient. You have to shut down the towers because the grid cant store energy. Wind and solar are not a energy source for a stable grid.

@mitchellcouchman1444

Күн бұрын

Yes but take one look at the UK power generation, Wind fluctuates between 70% of power and none. Power is only worth something if you can use it and often wind power actually makes every other power generation type more expensive (less uptime and more stop and starts for gap filling). This creates a distorted perspective of the cost of wind energy. Most countries are subsiding wind power often in ways most don't recognize as subsides (ie fixed price for power) again producing distorted cost analysis.

@billyredtail

Күн бұрын

@@mitchellcouchman1444 The more wind turbines you have up and down the UK, the less of an effect that problem is going to have. Just having floating offshore wind turbines alone reduces issues with storage by strategic placement.

@mitchellcouchman1444

Күн бұрын

@@billyredtail no it doesn't, not really, because wind in different places isn't independent. While at the same time replacing other more reliable and actually independent sources like gas, coal and nuclear you do put yourself massively at risk of the energy shortage of winter 2022 when there was minimal wind across all of the UK leading to energy shortages

@zebgraves4562

Күн бұрын

@@mitchellcouchman1444 absolutely right. It’s not the end all-be all for stability. Just the technology has come a long way. We’re starting to add battery storage in parallel with the wind turbines here in the U.S. and that helps with jumps and dips in energy demand but it also isn’t the final answer. Honestly I’d think closest to perfect solution would be nuclear that is also used to create Hydrogen and that hydrogen powering a gas plant for the fluctuations. But for now the wind business is putting food on my table and my family happy.

In 2015 I worked at a R&D company Artemis that was bought by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to make a variable ratio fluid power takeoff for the (then) largest turbine in the world at 7MW. I was the senior engineer leading the development of the high speed motors that turned the generator shafts that span at 1000rpm supplying synchronous power to the grid and helping with grid stabilisation. That speed was sufficient because of the number of pole-pairs on the generator. There were two prototypes installed: one in Hunterston, Glasgow and the other a floating wind turbine off Fukusfhima, Japan and they were both successful. We won the MacRobert award- the Nobel prize for engineering in the UK. The project was canned after the prototypes- don’t know why. Aside from our solution there are ‘medium’ speed gearboxes that obviously power slower generators. There’s not much on the web about it.

@jayryan1956

Күн бұрын

Like you guys designed a torque converter that didn’t have direct drive? To the generator?

@Marc83Aus

19 сағат бұрын

Theres a proposal from last year to install a flywheel for grid stabilization at hunterstone, seems like most things involving politics things happen very slowly.

@alanmarr3323

8 сағат бұрын

There seems a lobby attacking all renewables . Your statement was very interesting and the technology using fluid drive seems the solution!

The people turning on kettles for tea during ad breaks at 5:45 is probably the most british thing I have ever heard.

@MostlyPennyCat

2 күн бұрын

Same thing happens in every country, take the superbowl in the US. People open fridges, make coffee, etc. It's just that we're famous for drinking tea. But nobody says this about Japan! Or China? Or India?

@toggleton6365

2 күн бұрын

The same statistic is done in Germany right now. You can see it in the Water usage while pause of the UEFA European Championship people use the Toilet.

@mark_osborne

2 күн бұрын

LOL !!!

@captainnutnut6077

2 күн бұрын

When on a visit to the now closed Hinkley Point B visitor centre, my dad was told by a technician who worked there that one of the most important documents within the control centre of the reactor was, in fact, the Radio Times. For those outside the UK, that is a TV guide magazine. It allowed them to compensate for the spike in energy usage when the soaps finished, for example. 😂 it really is such a British thing, and as a proud English man, it makes me smile, but I digress.

@surters

2 күн бұрын

@@MostlyPennyCat Good question, what do they do in the break in China and Japan or even India?

Im an offshore wind turbine technician in the US. the platform i work on is a direct drive, no gearbox needed. Those generators are fascinating bits of tech.

@volvo09

2 күн бұрын

How long does the oil last in a gearbox driven generator?

@lilllwizzzle

2 күн бұрын

​@@volvo09it depends on the platform, but gear oil is usually changed during the yearly maintenance cycles

@DD2DL

2 күн бұрын

Battery storage

@SephShareBear

2 күн бұрын

Had the opportunity to get on a Siemens D11. Amazing machines, and a stark contrast to a traditional drive train

@E-JO

2 күн бұрын

I'm not sure whether the logic why direct drives are used in this video is correct: 'not fully understood bearing and gear failure, causing high repair costs'. I think gear life and failure statistics are very well understood in engineering, and maintenance is not a: oepsy it failed again - thing, its statistical. Its true that direct drive turbines just have less points of wear and therefore potential failure modes.

Northern Ireland resident here, currently sitting maybe a few hundred metres away from a wind turbine. Great to hear about a topic like this that's right in my back yard (well, in the farmer's field next door). I had noticed a lot more wind turbines appearing across the countryside in recent years - didn't know that the island of Ireland had so much more wind than the average.

I actually worked with the Delft Offshore Turbine team to work on a new system which has self-aligning piston rolling which don't have the Brinelling effect. These are actually turbines which pump water to a central generator. The weight of the turbine head is thereby reduced and the turbine can therefore be made higher (more wind power).

@mitchellcouchman1444

Күн бұрын

Curious, what sort of losses are associated with that and can you then adjust the generator side geometry to maintain 60hz/ 50hz?

@MarkJacksonGaming

13 сағат бұрын

-- That's smart. So you lose some power production, but through H2O valve/turbine control you can steady your output? What does maintenance look like in salt water? Would Zinc be worthwhile for the fluid systems, or would that be too expensive? A high tech windmill driven water well. I like it.

Mechanical design engineer of windturbine gearboxes here. I can say that the section of the gearboxes is not 100% correct. Yes the sensitieve part of the gearbox are the bearings, in particular the high speed shaft. But a lot of development is done in the bearing and bearing arrangement to reduce these failures to max 5-10 in a popultion of 1000. Also current gearboxed exist of 2 or even 3 planetary stages. These are just a few things

@MichaelKobler-yu6fy

Күн бұрын

Did you have any exposure to plain bearings in those gearboxes? Some manufacturers seem to have transitioned.

@JanHouben

Күн бұрын

​@@MichaelKobler-yu6fy Indeed, plain bearings are being used in the planetary stages now as well. But they bring their own issues and challenges. Another innovation is the medium speed drivetrain in which the generators rotate at 400-500 RPM, eliminating the need for a high speed year stage. The gearbox section shown in the video would have been 100% correct, for a typical design of around ca. 2010 😊

@PJke456

Күн бұрын

@@JanHouben that's correct colleague?😉

@johnathanclayton2887

19 сағат бұрын

​@@PJke456would you see any benefit from ceramic rolling elements? It was hoped that they'd be more durable than metal, but it looks like they might just end up being lighter.

@guiguiwillly3623

12 сағат бұрын

Couldn't something like a CVT be used to smooth out the frequency variation? I mean there has yo be a massive downside or it would be used. I just don't know what the most relevant downside is here 😅

little fun fact: enercon brand wind turbines (the ones wich have a egg shaped top housing and are very recognizable at 0:24) are the only widely used turbines w/o a gearbox, they instead have a large "pancake" style generator wich does not need any gears and is made specifically to generate peak power at the lower RPM the blades spin at its also why the housing is egg shaped edit: enercon recently celebrated 40 years and their first direct drive turbine, the E-40 was developed in the early 90s direct drive is nothing new, nothing that needs to "prove itself", its been proven and reliable for over 30 years now

@evdl3101

2 күн бұрын

The past few years both Siemens and GE have also devellopped a gearless turbine. The trick is to have more energy gain by having a selective variable rotor speed than the energy loss through the AC-DC-AC conversion.

@Monkey80llx

Күн бұрын

Still waiting for the ‘fun’

@shlak

Күн бұрын

​@@Monkey80llx then dont watch an engineering video you pillock

@acmhfmggru

Күн бұрын

Those are the ones that you need to shut down when the wind gets too high, and are also ineffective when the wind gets too low. What a wonderful technology! Surely this isn't an elaborate money laundering scheme for elites. Just keep supporting the green eco prosocial good (not evil) just and righteous technology, and any dissenters are EVIL BAD PEOPLE who hate the earth and you shouldn't listen to them at all.

@gehtdichnixan2801

Күн бұрын

Definitely not true, that they are the only widely used turbines without gearboxes. As someone else already posted, Siemens Gamesa, General Electric but also Vestas turbines used offshore are exclusively without gearboxes.

Thanks for the video, but it's a bit outdated. Wind turbines nowadays have better power control systems that allow the "inertia" effect and allow 50/60Hz output and variable speed without all of the power going through an inverter. The gearbox has a design life equivalent to the turbine's design life (15 years in France generally). On a turbine from REpower I worked on, the flowing was built -in: - It has a winded rotor. No permanent magnets requiring rare earth. - At partial load (low wind): partial load variable speed wind turbines (VSWT) utilize a method where the rotor operates at variable speeds while maintaining a constant 50Hz output on the stator. This is achieved through the injection of variable frequency current into the rotor, which is controlled to match the desired output frequency on the stator side. - At full load (high wind), the pitch changes depending the wind speed and grid frequency to maintain the 50Hz - VSWT can provide an emulated inertial response by using the kinetic energy stored in the rotating mass of the turbine. This is similar to the inertial response provided by traditional synchronous generators. When there is a sudden drop in grid frequency, the turbines can quickly inject additional power to the grid, helping to stabilize the frequency. During frequency drops, the turbine can temporarily operate in overproduction mode, generating more power than its mechanical input by using stored kinetic energy. This rapid power injection helps to counteract the frequency drop. After the frequency stabilizes, the turbine can reduce its output to recover its rotational speed and maintain optimal operating conditions.

@howardsimpson489

6 сағат бұрын

A better description of the variable frequency alternator. The 3 phase wound rotor is fed with a sine wave at the difference between 50 Hz and what the alternator rpm is trying to produce. This could be faster or slower. The high power output is inverter frequency controlled by a low power excitation input. This effect is called magnetic amplifier and means no niodymium magnets and no huge loads on inverters. I experimented with this as motor speed control 40 y6ears ago even before mosfets.

The comments are as educational as the video. This is not a criticisism. It is encouragement to read the comments. This is the first really interesting video I have seen on wind power, good job.

@Validole

Күн бұрын

Honestly, the video is somewhat outdated regarding the problems we're currently facing. It's repeating the already solved talking points of fossil executives, not the state of the art solutions to those problems.

That's hilarious to know an entire county's electrical grid can be tripped by people watching TV and all getting up to make tea at the same time.

@akyhne

2 күн бұрын

Well, the situation is present, no matter how you generate the electricity.

@aone9050

2 күн бұрын

​@@akyhnesure theoretically, but its primarily an issue of increased cost of reliable power when utilizing renewables

@jimlthor

2 күн бұрын

Yep. That's why during major events, such as the superbowl, those transmissions people are busy as hell. It's also rough when there's been a blackout and when they first turn everyone's power back on. The first second is rough because everyone's ACs, dryers, heaters, etc need more power when they first start

@jamesturner2126

2 күн бұрын

That was disturbing.

@JarheadCrayonEater

2 күн бұрын

The same thing happens at water and wastewater treatment plants when people get up to go to school/work, they may shower, flush the toilets, and use the sinks around the same time for a few hours. Then there's a few hours before lunch, then dinner, and finally before going to bed. Some plants have FEB's (Flow Equalization Basin) that temporarily hold the waste water until it can be processed during the low usage periods. I'm a former controls engineer and have designed, built, and maintained dozens of those plants around the country. It's amazing to see the infrastructure required to handle all of that. The same with the grid.

I know someone who works for a company developing HVDC links to connect country grids together, really cool tech. Maybe a video about HVDC can be a good complimentary video to this one.

@bimblinghill

2 күн бұрын

HVDC really is the under-discussed key to a renewable energy future

@Krasbin

Күн бұрын

Looking at the ac to dc converter used for the windturbine, wouldn't it be more efficient if these were connected to HVDC connections? Now that I have thought about it for more than 5 seconds, I spot a potential problem. The frequency isn't the problem, due to the ac to dc converter. But I would expect the voltage coming from a windturbine to be much lower than the HVDC voltage. If this expectation is correct, you can't connect windturbines to the HVDC line.

@vritra3684

Күн бұрын

@@Krasbin On Vestas machines the voltage output of the generator is around 600-800 volts, way less than what is needed for HVDC

@TheElectricBrit

Күн бұрын

@@Krasbinit’s planned, it’s called hybrid HVDC interconnectors and connects two countries to the same offshore wind resource. So they can both use the wind as well as use it as a hub for connecting more wind directly to existing networks. I’m going to produce a video on it in future (I work for such a company).

@TheElectricBrit

Күн бұрын

I’ve got 220 videos planned so far on the UK grid and grid technology including HVDC. Subscribe and it’ll come eventually :) worked in HVDC for many years.

10 years wind worker, have to say you are well informed. My only complain is about the video itself, looks like you didnt have any script. Came to find what is wind energy problem (yes, its true frecuency control is challenging more than a "problem" IMO) but 90% of the video is about Ireland and how you want to be producing hydrogen for the world to consume. Apart that I think hydrogen will definately never be a energy vector no matter what a politician pushes for it (physics) i think is very far from the topic. Seeing you speak about a topic i fully control, reasures me that when i watch other videos where i am less knowledgable i am being feed good info, keep it up!

The flywheel you refer to is called a Synchronous Condenser. We have a lot of them in the U.S. You disconnect the old steam turbine from the generator and attach a starting motor. You spin the generator up to synchronous speed and synch it to the grid, and then disconnect it from the starting motor. It uses power from the grid to continue running. You then have the spinning mass required to help stabilize the grid. This is currently the best means of voltage and frequency stabilization for all the renewable energy coming on line.

8:15 is that a FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER?!?!!!11!!1

@Grantly

2 күн бұрын

Calm down BigClive

@stereoroid

2 күн бұрын

It's a 2-phase rectifier, I would have thought these generators would be 3-phase.

@MostlyPennyCat

2 күн бұрын

Yes, that is indeed a *_Fffffuuuuull Bridge Rectifier_*

@I_SuperHiro_I

2 күн бұрын

It’s a Wheatstone bridge

@shiftyhexahedron7891

2 күн бұрын

FOOL BRIDGE RECTIFIERRR

Huawei power electronics engineer here. Right now, there are grid-forming capabilities for renewables power to stabilize the grid. These technologies are incorporated into the inverters and BESS systems. Look up the Red Sea projects.

@kopasz777

2 күн бұрын

Indeed, this problem he described only exists if the inverters are following the grid frequency. The channel Practical Engineering covers this for those who want to know more.

@SuperSpy00bob

2 күн бұрын

I came her to comment this as well. Those inverters are computerized, so it's just a software problem to have them "pretend" to have inertia, limited only by the turnbine's actual maximum power output at that moment.

@IronmanV5

2 күн бұрын

And the Hornsdale Power reserve.

@Henrik0x7F

2 күн бұрын

@@SuperSpy00bobNot that easy. A rotating generator can be overloaded a lot for a short while. Inverters can do something similar (and new ones do) but it’s not really comparable

@stephanweinberger

Күн бұрын

@@Henrik0x7F The inverters may need to be (a bit) overbuilt, yes. But then they are in fact better than mechanical inertia, because they can change the output frequency and voltage _immediately_.

Producing E-Fuels and burning them in internal combustion engines afterwards has an efficiency of 5-10%. Compare that with battery storage and direct electricity usage at a combined efficiency around 40-50%.

@sliwka621

Күн бұрын

The batteries made out of rare earth minerals that take an enourmous amount of energy to mine and refine? The batteries that degrade? Making efuels only requires electrolysis. And a liquid fuel can be transported cheaply. So take your battery storage efficiency down by a factor of 10.

@HT-vd4in

Күн бұрын

@@sliwka621 Batteries are NOT made out of rare earth materials! Lithium is not a rare earth metal such as Neodymium. Many electric motors and generators are made out of rare earth metals, although you can make them without them. Of course you can criticize Lithium mining and battery production, but please stay by the facts

@perrybrown4985

Күн бұрын

The benefit of synthetic fuels is that they have an effectively infinite storage capacity.

@Meyer-gp7nq

Күн бұрын

Google methanol economy

@5353Jumper

Күн бұрын

I got sad as soon as he mentioned Hydrogen. Often it is a terrible solution being promoted by all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. As long as electrolysis using oversupply of "green" generation makes the Hydrogen, and then that Hydrogen supply replaces existing applications of hydrogen previously using Methan Steam Reformed production...then maybe it makes sense. 1. We are unlikely to ever have much sustainable oversupply of green generation to make Hydrogen with. 2. If we do have oversupply of green generation are we sure Hydrogen production is the best use of it compared to all the other potential uses like storage for future peaks, or making something else, or carbon capture. 3. Before we start dreaming of new applications for Hydrogen like transportation and such, ALL the current demand for medical, industrial and agricultural Hydrogen needs to be converted from Steam Reforming to Electrolysis. As long as some Hydrogen is produced with Methane, the ALL Hydrogen is dirty. Creating new demand for Hydrogen just extends the life and pollution from dirty Hydrogen production. Making hydrogen is a very inefficient conversion of energy. Hydrogen is a fuel needing to be transported and stored which is also terribly inefficient. Most uses of hydrogen are also terribly inefficient energy conversion so it is lost on both ends and the middle. Once you run the math hydrogen is almost never a good option.

The Haliade-X is not the largest turbine, that's either the Siemens Gamesa 14 (14MW) the Dongfang Electric DEW-18 (18MW)

as someone who works with frequency converters and know the actual people developing the Haliade X drive, i highly recommend making a video on frequency converters, they are used basically everywhere and always get overlooked. also the DC storage within a converter can be used als 'artificial' inertia, but obviously has nowhere near the capacity of an actual flywheel.

@Pfooh

2 күн бұрын

Do you know why you can't build a DC->AC converter that would just work like an inertial system? Switch a tiny bit slower if f

@Henrik0x7F

2 күн бұрын

@@PfoohInverters do that but just a little bit because they are delicate electronic devices. Rotating generators can supply a multitude of their rated current for a short while. Inverters can’t do that

@randomvideosn0where

2 күн бұрын

@@Pfooh For one thing, you are generally drawing the max power from the wind turbine. You could delay it but there is no option to ramp up power output to meet higher needs.

@m00str

2 күн бұрын

@@randomvideosn0wherewell, that’s just if you operate wind and solar at 100%. Some large solar farms operate at 70-80% to be able to provide „digital inertia“ in case the grid needs it. That’s why we need massive overproduction by wind and by solar all around the world: to have the luxury of throttling them down

@Former_Texan

Күн бұрын

@@Pfooh It's not going to be that difficult. It just needs more research to make sure we don't get it wrong. Until recently there was enough inertia that it wasn't needed, so the engineering wasn't focused on creating artificial inertia.

You left out something rather important. Software defined inverters (basically all modern industrial ones) like those used in Battery Electricity Storage Systems (BESS) and Variable Frequency Drives (like those used in wind turbines for frequency conversion) are very good at maintaining inertia on a power grid. In other words, spinning a large mass (flywheels, steam turbines) is not the only way to provide inertia for a grid. Utilities call these frequency response services. Huge flywheels like the one you mentioned in Ireland are made redundant when you're installing large battery storage anyways. It's even entirely possible, though not currently implemented, for EVs doing V2G (vehicle to grid) to provide frequency response services. In the case of the English flipping on their tea kettles during commercial breaks, your EV would charge from the grid during programming, but flip to powering your tea kettle during the commercial break all automatically.

@EP-bb1rm

2 күн бұрын

Flywheels aren't made redundant by BESS. Synthetic inertia would require all BESS to maintain sufficient capacity at all times to provide that service. Which defeats the point entirely...

@Your_Paramour

2 күн бұрын

Good post. I would think the advantage the flywheel has vs a battery system is probably a much higher power density. The press release for the flywheel plant states it can store 4000 MWs and they give they give an example of a 500MW load for 8 seconds (so I assume the flywheel's maximum power is 500MW). It's not clear to me reading the press release, but to me it sounds like they describe the frequency stablisation it provides is a passive system that does not require active management (but I could be off on this point).

@zacksstuff

2 күн бұрын

Inverters are still not great at providing fault current, which is absolutely essential to protecting transmission and distribution circuits. Fuses and relays don't do their job without large amounts of available fault current, and that leads to damaged equipment and worse.

@dacharyzoo

Күн бұрын

@@EP-bb1rm This flywheel only stores 1.1MWh of energy. A 500MW BESS will have a capacity of 1000MWh to 2000MWh. The BESS are going to be installed anyways, you get the inertia for free. Perhaps there is something specific to Ireland's grid topology that warrants this flywheel, but I'll bet good money flywheels will remain niche.

@dacharyzoo

Күн бұрын

@@zacksstuff I don't think this is right. Actually this sounds backwards. Fuses and relays don't work better by dumping larger fault currents into them. They have a trip current and a maximum current they can break. The reason the grid needs inertia is so that different parts of the grid don't get out of sync, if they get out of sync a dangerously large fault current will flow between. This is why safety equipment is designed to trip if the frequency gets out of the small defined range, to prevent fault currents the over current devices can't handle before they happen.

The wind flows off the Scottish coast are the greatest, most consistent in Europe. We also have pumped storage in Scotland where water is pumped up during low energy usage times , then released down when energy is required. Wind turbines do not need replacement every 7 years. It’s just a big generator and there are thousands of industrial models used far more heavily without issue in powers stations worldwide.

@johnmchardy4502

15 сағат бұрын

Yes there just cheaply built reduction gear and the public get charged a massive amount for them when you could buy a quality reduction gear system for a fraction of the green energy sector prices but everything in the green industry is charged at astronomical prices compared to normal machinery

It's great to see you do a video about our lovely island, I'm lucky to have the Raheenleagh wind farm on my doorstep. As an engineer I always appreciate the science behind these machines.

I Think you are giving the impression that the problem of inertia has only appeared since renewables grew in importance, but various issues including inertia have required synchronous compensators in the past. Synchronous compensators, being dumb rotating machines with a flywheel. They are coming back into fashion because of renewables.

@Turnipstalk

Күн бұрын

Completely OT, the time machines in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books are derived from his seeing compensators when working in PR for the British nuclear energy system. Same principle but applied to time.

@solace6633

Күн бұрын

That is why most relatively new build renewable farm, both wind and solar, will first send their power to a battery storage, that then deploys to the grid. You lose a little bit of output total but gain massively in term stability. Very few plants I worked on, as a control systems engineer, here in Australia, didn't have these small 30MW batteries solutions to the inertia issue

@michawisniewski4654

Күн бұрын

totally wrong opinion. Steam turbines have all the inertia that system would ever need for primary frequency control. Synchronous condensers were introduced for a different purpose - to continously adjust reactive power in 'problematic' substations. This solution was virtually not present in countries with CHP plants - densely distributed generation can rely mostly on the turbine voltage regulators, solution older than the three-phase grid itself. Rise of SCR-controlled capacitor (and sometimes inductor) banks removed needs for synchronous condensers, although they are still operational and may provide minuscule amount of inertia.

@billynomates920

Күн бұрын

so we are reintroducing a problem we'd already solved thanks to dumb rotating machines with fan blades?

@SillySandgroper7076

Күн бұрын

Not to say I disagree with you - but I'd suggest that power electronics didn't make the problem go away - they just made it easier to manage in millisecond timeframes. Spinning reserve (which was needed anyway), non-synchronous compensators and electronic micro-adjustments to generators were then able to manage grid instability much more quickly without the need for rotating compensators - you'll note that these were traditionally put nearby to loads, when the generation might be hundreds of kilometres away. There seems to be a school of thought that all of this will eventually be able to be managed electronically with batteries and capacitors that switch over in hundredths of milliseconds and keep everything online without hitting protection or cascade failures, however with an inertia-less generation side - which is a feature of a renewable grid, if you have any level of inductance/pf, load/supply, phase misalignment etcetc fluctuation... you're instantly relying on your electronics, which isn't necessarily a great place to be. However, it doesn't need to be a hyper-efficient compensator, you can turn a defunct coal or gas power plant in to one.

Inertia can be added artificially. This artificial inertia could even be better than the real inertia. While a real spinning rotor can only slow down from 1800 rpm to 1797 rpm to go from 60Hz to 59.9Hz, with a rectifier and inverter, the physical rpm be changed 20% or more, making far more of that rotational energy available. That energy doesn't even have to be rotational. Battery storage systems could react instantly with their stored power, providing short bursts above their continuous rating. Even solar inverters could be programmed to have artificial inertia. The inverter (and sometimes DC booster) has internal capacitors that can be tapped (though their stored energy is a lot less).

@oznerol256

2 күн бұрын

Thank you! I was also missing an explanation of doubly fed induction generators, which allow direct connection to the grid while having a fairly decoupled speed. Those have inertia too.

@polterp

2 күн бұрын

In many grids the majority of grid inertia is already provided by batteries, as they are extremely well suited for that task. Would have been a good topic to bring up

@edwinhuang9244

2 күн бұрын

The problem with chemical batteries is that: 1. They're expensive, especially at the scales needed to deal with the power grids 2. They can only unload so much power within a certain timespan before they start getting damaged

@polterp

2 күн бұрын

@@edwinhuang9244 “they’re expensive” Private investors pay for them, and then get paid for the frequency response services they provide. Previously that money would go to natural gas plants or other dispatchable sources, but BESS saw a niche where they were competitive and said “hey, we can provide the same service for cheaper”. The grid operators save money, ratepayers save money, and the BESS owners make money. Legacy dispatchable sources get the short end of the stick, but I’m not really a protectionism kinda guy. Also you only need a relatively small battery to do frequency response

@fablearchitect7645

2 күн бұрын

yeah and if you want to add more synthetic inertia capacity you just add more capacitors or batteries to the DC bus of the inverter. People really need to get this idea that we need mechanical inertia out of there heads. The grid runs on electricity so electrical only solutions would work fine.

What I love: In most channels, a title like this prompts hundreds of totally uninformed comments about why wind power doesn't work. Here, you get lots of comments by actual engineers who know what they are talking about, giving real-world insights into specific issues

@alana8863

12 сағат бұрын

Absolutely. I'm no engineer, but I love to hear from those who can discuss issues relating to renewables and help me learn about the subject. It's refreshing not to see a comments section filled with, 'All wind turbines break', 'it can't be done' (often without any mention of what 'it' means), 'what happens when the sun dies?' etc, etc. It's sad knowing that many of these comments are from bots, and they come originally from those who aren't trying to make the world a better place to live in. Thanks to everyone who shares their knowledge!

@Dr.Kraig_Ren

9 сағат бұрын

I think you don't watch videos that are more like university presentations and video essays.

@TobiKellner

9 сағат бұрын

@@Dr.Kraig_Ren I watch both. My point was that for a channel as "mainstream" as Real Engineering, it's refreshing. The university presentation type videos usually don't get nearly a million views and 3000 comments in a day or so 🙂

I just finished a project where we needed to design a proces of converting biogenic carbon into some type of platform molecule for fuel. One of the profs works in Ireland, and there was a representative of ESB present during the final presentations. They wanted to see what ideas might work to produce the artificial hydrocarbon you talked about generated from waste streams. Awesome to see something I'm actually kind of involved in being shown on your chanel!

8:16 FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER

@Dudz_MgGee

2 күн бұрын

underrated comment, lol

@harikrishna69

Күн бұрын

So?

@Dudz_MgGee

Күн бұрын

@@harikrishna69 ElctroBOOM reference...

@PiezPiedPy

Күн бұрын

Switched bridge

@Sellyei

Күн бұрын

I like, that I wasnt alone who thought about MEHDI when I heard that :D

please do the insane engineering of the SUPERCARRIERS

@marshalllapenta7656

2 күн бұрын

3 GORGES DAM

@MostlyPennyCat

2 күн бұрын

Extreme UV Lithography.

@sirensynapse5603

2 күн бұрын

Warmongering creepoid.

@MihkelKukk

2 күн бұрын

The Insane Engineering of YOUR MOTHER!

@xstream2952

2 күн бұрын

​@@MihkelKukkbe respectful idiot Doesn't matter even if it's a joke

The solution to the inertia problem is not to add new hardware to the grid. It can easily be solved by changing the software on the turbine inverters to mimic inertia to the grid. This is done by introducing a slight phase lead when the grid frequency falls below 60Hz, and add a slight phase lag when the frequency rises above 60Hz (exactly the way that a rotating electromechanical generator does when speeding up or slowing down). The actual implementation has some interesting details, and also requires a relatively precise internal oscillator, but is otherwise not meaningfully more expensive to implement on existing inverter hardware.

@Validole

Күн бұрын

It does however require derating of the inverter itself, as now you have reactive loading on the components that a purely grid-following implementation doesn't have. Also: this solution needs to be well-characterized and with smooth back-off, to avoid a situation where many similar devices suddenly reached the maximum of what balancing action they provide, and stopped providing more (meaning other devices should provide more, causing them to reach their maximum etc). Spinning mass, for all its faults, does have the benefit of being capable of exceptional overload without calling it quits (for short periods) Also consider that the grids are set up on the assumption, that across the grid, the generating sets are mostly in phase (that is, that the electrical distance from one extreme of the grid to the other is marginal compared to the 20ms period of the frequency). Electronics can react much faster than that. That sounds like a good thing, until you realize that this means that several inverters at opposite ends of the grid will now try to compensate, at slightly different times, and can then cause a feedback loop that can bring down the grid, not assist it. So possible, but not at all trivial. Too-simple ways of doing it have caused blackouts already. That said, I agree that ultimately, this is a problem to be solved, not a fundamental constraint.

On the point of frequency control/grid inertia--although modern wind turbines do not have a direct connection between the generator and grid, they can still supply "synthetic" inertia. Essentially, if the frequency dips, the power electronic converters are commanded to put out extra power to the grid. On short time scales (seconds), this is called "primary frequency response." It has the net effect of slightly slowing down the speed of the wind turbine rotor, similar to a conventional power plant. On longer time scales (minutes), the power grid typically also needs "secondary frequency response." Here, it's good to have generators available that can put out extra power for 30 minutes or so. For a wind turbine to serve this purpose, it must be "de-rated." A de-rated turbine supplies a fraction of its maximum power output (e.g., say 90% rated capacity). One way to de-rate a turbine is to pitch the blades a few degrees out of the wind. When needed, the blades can be pitched back to optimal for full power output. Source: "Wind Energy Generation: Modeling and Control" by Anaya-Lara, et al.

@alexlovett1991

Сағат бұрын

When I studied this a decade ago, there was also talk of allowing the turbine to speed up in anticipation of a surge (offsetting the MPPT curve a bit)

Correction regarding your point about inertia at the 8:30 mark. Yes, inverter based power sources like Wind and Solar do not have physical inertia. But they do have an inverter that can spit out whatever waveform it wants. Which from the perspective of the grid is the same thing as inertia. It is very easy to program an inverter to slightly increase its frequency relative to the grid frequency when it detects a drop, which effectively achieves the same goal as a big spinning generator. The only thing you need to do for this, is to have a tiny buffer of potential energy that you aren't feeding into the grid by default. So if your solar panel is providing 100kW of power, you should only feed 95kW into the grid and use the remaining 5kW for frequency regulation. This is not conventionally done because wind turbine and solar panel owners aren't required to do so, and they earn more money by selling the full 100kW. But that's an easy fix with some regulation. Or hell, even just licencing requirement from the grid operator. You don't need to build vacuum sealed flywheels for grid stability at all.

@pilotavery

2 күн бұрын

No that's not how this works because for inertia you need to store the energy somehow. What this means is that If you need to put double the energy out for a few seconds, The energy has to come from somewhere and you won't be able to do it. You can use batteries or capacitors, along with the inverter, but there isn't inertia because there's no actual energy buffer. What the inertia means is that if you immediately double the amount of energy you want to draw from it, for a few seconds, You will quickly stop the blades. Even if you're using it at 95% capacity

@pilotavery

2 күн бұрын

That's not how it works, when the grid frequency drops it doesn't actually increase the frequency by increasing its own frequency, it increases the frequency by simply running app the frequency that the grid is at, which is slower, but with a tiny bit I'll say is with much much much higher voltage feeding back into the grid to try to get it back up to speed hoping that everyone else does the same thing.

@harmenkoster7451

2 күн бұрын

@@pilotavery Yes, that extra required energy is in the 5% buffer you have. The grid experiences a sudden surge in power draw. This manifests as a drop in grid frequency. Your solar inverter detects that drop in frequency and it adjusts its own frequency to be slightly forward in phase relative to the grid. This causes more power to be fed into the grid (The extra 5kw), which counteracts the extra load and thus functions as inertia. You are using that extra 5% of oomph as your buffer. This all happens in milliseconds, resulting in a very smooth grid frequency. Now, if only a single solar power plant did that, it would indeed not have enough buffer power to do that. But if every single inverter on the grid has frequency compensation programmed in, the added load is trivial. To overwhelm the system the unexpected added load to the grid would have to exceed the buffer, and that just doesn't happen. Nobody is suddenly increasing total load on the grid by several percentage points without first informing the grid operator.

@pilotavery

2 күн бұрын

@@harmenkoster7451 5% is not enough, When the frequency drops by 1% you usually have about a 50% increase in load. A 5% buffer doesn't really do shit, You have exponentially more and more torque against the inertia...

@Henrik0x7F

2 күн бұрын

@@harmenkoster7451A rotating generator can output a multitude of their rated power for a short while. That means at least twice the rated power not just a few percent. Modern inverters do their best like you said but it’s not comparable

Just drove past the construction site for the giant inverter/rectifier for the celtic interconnector , connecting irelands grid to europes .. so its all going ahead

@TealJosh

2 күн бұрын

Yeah, I found that bit a weird from Real Engineering. He discusses how wind turbines lack ability to provide grid inertia due to AC-DC-AC conversion, but that's how the interconnector will work. It's going to run on HVDC and without the ability of modern inverters to add "simulated" inertia, wouldn't be helpful at all.

@riparianlife97701

Күн бұрын

I thought he was saying "Arland", and I had no idea where that could be.

@wumi2419

Күн бұрын

​@TealJosh interconnector has a whole power grid to take power from or supply it to. Where can excess power appear from or go to in AC-DC-AC bridge?

I've been saying for more than 10 years that renewables can never be a solution on their own because we need to also invest in energy storage and frequency control technologies. I know this because I worked in energy grid modelling and optimisation, specifically focusing on how we can maintain a stable grid as we continue to push renewables penetration. So I know a thing or two about this stuff. But every time I said anything like this, I would get downvoted or banned or whatever. People must have thought I was anti-renewables, which is totally not the case. Anyway, I'm glad you (and others) have had more success getting this message into the mainstream.

@crankboiler

Күн бұрын

I think because it sounds and looks good, people are happy with it and buy it. But like you, just dig a bit deeper in this and you will find out that this is a total fail for what this is sold for the public. Renewable energy looks good, but are a nuclear impact for the environment and nature 🤷‍♂️

@myne00

Күн бұрын

Storage is less of an issue when the grid is bigger. HVDC links will eventually connect the world. Australia will soon be connected to mainland Asia via Suncable. The USA is likely to eventually connect to Europe via Iceland. The rest is politics, but eventually, the world will have a single grid, and storage will be a lesser issue.

@Kiboxxx

Күн бұрын

Renewables + batteries Problem solved

@Yourbrightspot

Күн бұрын

​@myne00 DC interconnections have always been a dream. But due to factors that include geo political, such a dream might never happen.

@Mc674bo

Күн бұрын

All rather funny that so much thought and energy is being invested in a problem that doesn’t exist , and when eventually this is recognised . The prospect of removing these things from the landscape will be a less appealing prospect , so they will remain where they stand as a constant reminder of what happens when money and politics are left in control .

Texas is not isolated, near Amarillo, TX is a large interconnect where Texas can supply West Coast and Midwest grids with the additional wind energy generated across the Panhandle, South Plains, and Trans Pecos regions.

I'm halfway through the video when I realize after a map of Ireland is show, that this is where he's talking about. That thick Irish accent and my lack of coffee has done me for the morning.

@talideon

2 күн бұрын

He doesn't have a particularly strong accent as they go.

@General12th

2 күн бұрын

*ARLAN*

@haqvor

2 күн бұрын

The example with 60 Hz threw me off for a while as well. Just use 50 Hz if you are in Europe, it's good for the Americans to be forced out of their comfort zone once in a while... ;)

@CartoType

2 күн бұрын

I thought his accent was clear and attractive. But it was very amusing when he stated that Ireland was isolated, then a map appeared showing that the Republic of Ireland has a land border with the UK, and the island of Ireland is very close to the island of Britain. In fact you can see one island from the other.

@JonnyD3ath

2 күн бұрын

@@CartoTypeelectrically isolated

We need a big ass CVT for the wind turbines so they can always go at 60 hz

@Meyer-gp7nq

Күн бұрын

That’s what I thought watching this too

@mitchellcouchman1444

Күн бұрын

CVT drives don't scale well and are both inefficient and have poor service life

@SeaMushroom98

Күн бұрын

Just use some power electronics to match your output frequency. Electrical solutions can be much more reliable and easier to fix

@martinhammett8121

36 минут бұрын

@@mitchellcouchman1444 CVT ? (Current voltage transformer ? circuit )

Both solar and wind turbine inverters are programmed to ride-through faults. They do not simply turn off when the grid becomes unstable. The real issue is keeping them all in perfect synchronization. When you have a lot of inverters vs spinning mass it becomes hard to tell what the phase angle is during a fault.

I love these videos so much! I'll always learn something new and the topic of challenges that come with managing the grid is extremely interesting!

For a bigger portion of the video than i want to admit i thought we were talking about a small island called Arlan. And now i can't stop hearing it. I live on the west coast of Finland. Wind power + hydrogen plants are a nice combo. Specially when there is a lithium mine less than 100km away and it needs to be processed to lithium hydroxide. Estimated 5% of global production should be coming from here in few years and it is easy to sell when there is renewable energy involved: you can avoid carbon taxes etc. and whoever makes the battery can boast about it in their marketing.

@amanasd26

Күн бұрын

I thought the exact same thing. "Where is Arlan?"

Didn't Norway find a huge ' field' of rare earth minerals recently? I'm sure that this will help curb the costs of them within 10 years.

@bimmjim

2 күн бұрын

Miner here. There are abundant deposits of rare earth minerals around the world. .. China does it cheap by having no environmental regulations. .. Mining of rare earths is extremely toxic and very expensive to fix. That's why the US shut down their rare earth mines and started bying from China. .. Lithium is also abundant. It's the cost to mine.

@sliwka621

Күн бұрын

​@@bimmjimAll the "green" crap is just outsourcing pollution and human suffering to China.

@Tank50us

Күн бұрын

@@bimmjim Something our political leaders don't fully understand. People may say that they care about Carbon emissions or climate change... but if you can't breath the air or drink the water, what's the point of all of that? To truly do good by our children, we need to stop buying from countries who have zero interest in environmental protections.

I completed my masters degree on direct drive power converters a decade ago. The inertia of the turbine is absolutely still present even if not directly synchronised to the grid. Under a surge the controller can have the inverter match the grid demand and slow the turbine down by drawing more power from it than it is currently producing. In fact at the time I was studying it I was informed of techniques to allow the turbines to spin faster storing more energy in inertia if a surge is predicted overriding the MPPT algorithm. It’s not too dissimilar to how battery storage is being used to stabilise the grid

In the past month, Scandinavia and Japan have discovered extremely huge amounts of rare earth minerals.

As a Texan living close to wind turbine fields, I'm a big supporter of them.. 30-40mph winds occur more often than not. I also understand you can't rely on it entirely. Solar power is where it's at here.. It's consistent and it's never been more efficient. Pair data centers with these Solar/Wind plants to manage frequency and you have a beautiful orchestra of power management.

@bimmjim

2 күн бұрын

In the video, there is an ERROR about the Texas shut down a few years ago. Texas has ample natural gas generating capacity. And natural gas power can be generated in Siberia and Northern Canada, no problem. It's just that Texas's natural gas generating plants were not designed to operate at lower temperatures. They could have been but they were not. .. The power problems in Texas had nothing to do with the Wind capacity.

@IronmanV5

2 күн бұрын

@@bimmjim It was worse than that. There is a program, administered by a private company, that pays businesses to shut down unneeded equipment during power emergencies. They had signed up gas pumping stations. So less fuel available on top of a few too many power plants not being winterized. It was beyond embarrassing.

@OutletVibes

2 күн бұрын

@@bimmjim You must've missed Practical Engineering's video on it. Cause you're wrong.

@socallars3748

2 күн бұрын

I think it's fair to say that moving to renewable energy will require multiple sources and technologies and for a while, non-renewable sources to help fill the gaps. It's entirely doable, just not overnight. We need to keep moving forward.

@OutletVibes

2 күн бұрын

@@IronmanV5 This was really just the tip of the ice berg.

I worked on wind turbines for 12 years. They are full of oil and grease. The gearbox has over 500L of oil and the hydraulics are about 300L, of which all gets replaced every 5 years over a 20 year lifetime. What happens with the blades after they are decommissioned? Gearbox are not multimillion dollars lmao, and an average turbine last far more than 7 years...where did you get that info??

@furripupau

2 күн бұрын

And you suppose a turbine in a steam plant runs without any lubrication, or what?

@drunkenhobo8020

2 күн бұрын

Wow, 800 litres of oil in 5 years. If that were petrol that would be enough to run a single car for 10,000 km, or one average year of driving. That's basically nothing.

@bassblair11

Күн бұрын

@@furripupau where did I say that?

@Validole

Күн бұрын

This comment is one of those "I don't quite understand where you're going with it" ones. I think you're trying to point out some environmental issues while pointing out factual faults in the video? And assuming we understand the implications, because they're clear? It's something ai and many other engineers do, where we subconsciously assume everyone else thinks the same way. The reality is, that everyone has slightly different backgrounds and ways of thinking, so it usually is clearer to state your conclusions backed by the data, not just the data. The amount of lubrication is slightly surprising... but it shouldn't be, a small car engine takes a hundredth of that, and is changed at least every year. The blades are currently the most painful waste product. Attempts at developing recycling are ongoing, but much of it gets landfilled, currently. Main problem is that the easiest way to get the resin away from the glass fiber is burning, and the shredded glass fiber is not suitable for turning back into blades (which require continuous woven fiber to achieve their target weight-to-strength ratio). Carbon fiber you can't even burn free. And the resins themselves are not exactly green products.

@bassblair11

Күн бұрын

@Validole I was just pointing out a few facts and I'm not trying to come up with any solutions or fix any problems. I have very extensive knowledge in the operations of a wind turbine, I don't know too many people who have 10+ years in wind turbine maintenance.

Really enjoyed the details. I was about to comment on missing direct drive… but then you detailed it real well

Great breakdown of the engineering challenges with wind turbines. The detailed look into gearbox failures and grid frequency management was particularly informative.

Rare earth minerals have, within the last month, been found in very large quantities in Scandinavia and Japan

@ronblack7870

2 күн бұрын

it's not the locations as these are all over the world it's that china does almost all of the refining because they do it cheaper by mostly ignoring environmental problems in the refining. to do it clean takes more money so it's more expensive.

@Calyx

Күн бұрын

It's been found but the infrastructure is not in place for processing. The mine in Kiruna, Sweden is still far away from developing the Rare Earth deposit, so at the moment, China still holds all the marbles.

@jacksons1010

Күн бұрын

Rare Earth is a misnomer, as these elements are not rare per se. The issue is the lack of concentrated ores and hence the cost and waste of refining from low grade ores. Now that there are significant uses for these “rare” elements a lot more prospecting is being done.

@Tokru86

Күн бұрын

Rare earths are abundant in a lot of places. Even in western countries. But environmentalists are doing anything they can to prevent the mining of it in the truest NIMBY fashion one can imagine.

@ray.shoesmith

Күн бұрын

​@@Tokru86 Indeed, behind China the next 2 largest producers of rare earth metals are the USA and Australia. Both fairly 'western'.

Comments under every clean energy post: There's nowhere to store all that energy! Comments under every electric car post: There's no clean way to charge those huge batteries!

@Blckjack18

2 күн бұрын

Thank you... in my view, each car with a battery should be connected to the grid to store electricity. Not only for wind but for solar. If you have a solar roof, you can charge your battery during the day and run the services you need after dark. Just make sure you put on your dryer when electricity is free

@CaffeinatedFrostbite

2 күн бұрын

I would like to propose a better alternative. Nuclear. In the usa we are seeing dead wind farms. Countless broken and abandoned wind turbines in large swathes of land. The concrete bases of these things are permanent and ruin the countryside. "clean" energy apparently does not account for longevity or what happens after they get built. We are seeing that once they break they get abandoned. Essentially becoming massive towers of trash. Nuclear is better in every single possible conceivable way. It takes up less land for more power. Nuclear waste is generally safe to store. Nuclear waste is essentially infinitely recyclable. Nuclear reactors are very safe with modern technology. Nuclear is the cleanest and safest energy on the planet. Why do you "green" people not like it?

@MostlyPennyCat

2 күн бұрын

We've already got the grid, it just needs upgrading to be a smart grid.

@JohnDegurechaff

2 күн бұрын

Electric cars still cause more global warming in an hour than a 100 year old house causes in 14 hours, and a new house in over 28 hours. We have to reduce car use across the planet by at least half.

@riparianlife97701

2 күн бұрын

@@Tyneras Oil companies love to pretend the metals required aren't recyclable, because their business model is literally burning stuff. Add in recyclability, and an electric future works.

Many of the problems mentioned at the beginning of this video can be addressed by eliminating gear-boxes entirely and utilizing DC generators (vs a synchronous AC generator). Such a wind turbine with DC generator is pictured at 13:10, from UK. Notice how the nasal (enclosed section on top) is much smaller, as it no gearbox is on top of the tower, thus reducing weight, construction and maintenance). Power is feed as DC to the grown where it can be converted to AC, or stored from DC into Battery Energy Storage (BESS). Both Texas, and Ireland mentioned in video have GWh of BESS already that serve a dual function of stabilizing grid frequency and providing unto 6 hours of redundancy. The same inverter power electronics that convert wind DC to AC for the grid can also convert DC from the BESS for the grid on demand. Since wind can be forecast with greater than 90% accuracy 1-2 days in advance, there is not really a need to have larger storage capacity. BTW: the round trip efficiency of converting electricity to hydrogen, and then back to electricity is very inefficient, being in 30% range. BESS (battery storage) has a round trip efficiencies in the 80% range and can instantly switch from storing to producing, or from producing to storing electricity. With hydrogen two different systems are required, a fuel cell to make electricity and electrolysis (water to hydrogen) plus a compressor (to reduce hydrogen volume) are required. Thus hydrogen is a costly energy storage method.

@mitchellcouchman1444

Күн бұрын

1 - DC generators typically trade off efficiency 2 - Battery storage is very expensive 3 - 6hr storage isn't remotely enough as predicting the energy generation is less important than net generation over a period of time which fluctuates, as a result excess generation capacity is often required to reduce storage requirement during low wind conditions but can only do so much as you can get whole weeks with minimal wind as was seen recently in the UK 4 - Planes need energy density that batteries can't provide and due to their weight batteries actually make a plane so much less efficient that its far more cost effective to use hydrogen plus requires minimal modification to existing aircraft / aircraft infastrcture

@asificam1

Күн бұрын

Using chemistry to store energy in a synthetic fuel is very inefficient, but so are gas engines and we don't care. The reason we use less efficient methods of energy usage for mobile power like cars, ships, aircraft, some powertools, etc. is that chemical fuels like gasoline have HUNDREDS of times the energy density of batteries that exist and still several orders of magnitude more energy density than ANY battery will EVER reach because of the limits of electrochemistry. Gasoline plus air is so energy dense that a cheap car like mine can get double the range of a top tier EV with a fuel tank that weighs about as much as me... the EV battery weighs more than my whole car by itself (Tesla batteries weigh more than a metric ton). That might work for city dwelling cars, but if you have to tow ANYTHING or operate with limited charging infrastructure (such as country folk, or any work truck), and batteries just get stupidly impractical even if they magically went from 80% round trip to 120% round tip and broke thermodynamics. Ships need to carry huge amounts of energy to carry their loads but can do so with less energy per unit weight and distance than trucks, trains, or planes... but they are miles from shore so powering them is just stupid impractical with batteries. Aircraft with batteries would have such a short range, long charging time, and small cargo capacity that for anything other than training, they would be stupid impractical. Using waste energy from curtailed energy means that the round trip efficiency does not really matter all that much. You're not wrong, you just missed a few variables. Single variable analysis like CO2 alone or energy efficiency alone miss real problems like not getting the battery electric aircraft off the runway or having millions of us Canadians frozen to death in the winter because solar resources are lower in the winter, minimum energy needed to keep you alive is more than triple the summer months, and one day without enough wind would mean having to haul around very inefficient diesel peaker gensets and portable gas generators just to avoid freezing and bursting pipes or people dying of hypothermia... and our weather in Alberta is very unpredictable (often going and doing the opposite of the forecast last minute). My solar panels provide more power than I could every hope to use in the summer even when running some long, costly, and power intensive multi day compute jobs on my computers, cranking the A/C full blast, and just not caring about power usage... we still popped breakers between some buildings and the grid (needed to use more power in those buildings to keep get the peak output used there instead of through the under rated breaker)... however, in winter, less than 5% of our needed energy is available through solar. Even if we had the option for efficient heat pumps back when we installed, even if those heat pumps would work in -35C or -40C (yes it can get that cold even in Calgary and Edmonton areas), even if the heat pumps would have an acceptable COP, we would still use so much more energy than we make that we would freeze and die without a grid connection. There is no battery big enough to store enough power to operate effectively without a recharge all winter... and so we offset most of our energy needs by using gas furnace for heat and a wood fireplace as a backup... and even just the energy needed for cooking and lighting is more than triple what we generate (and ye we do keep the panels snow free). Wind is no different, one bad day and all the batteries in the world would be depleted. Need backup power like nuclear for baseload, stupid level of pumped storage, and some form of steam power plant for grid stabilization and backup power that is faster to respond than nuclear (and less politically controversial)... so unless you want us to have to rely on diesel engines which are not overly efficient, the only option is to either extract hydrocarbon fuels from the ground (which we do ethically and relatively efficiently given what we have to work with), or we can waste 70% of generated power to store the excess in synthetic hydrocarbons in tanks the size of a city in order to power ourselves through the majority of the year (which is icy cold winter).

I really like your videos, but this time you missed... All those issues you are talking about in this video was solved 10y ago. Synthetic Inertia is mandatory in order to pass Grid Compliance Test, Gearbox issues are real strugle, but nobody is replacing them every 7y and cost is about 500k for full replacement including work and spare parts. Also, in the video, you are showing Enercon turbines, and those do not have any of those issues: No Gearbox, no permanent magnets, Synthetic Inertia is included 20y ago in every turbine...

@copium7845

Күн бұрын

what about the extreme amount of noise they causes?. There are people who cant live at their houses anymore because companies decide to put up wind turbines nearby

@williamcampbell9859

Күн бұрын

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Move.

@estebanamador7601

Күн бұрын

How does synthetic inertia works? Thanks

@devrim-oguz

Күн бұрын

@@estebanamador7601 inertia is simulated with the help of electronics, since it is just a 60Hz wave.

@francisKngz

Күн бұрын

​@@williamcampbell9859People with attitudes like yours are why there is such pushback against some new technologies. Arrogant people who dismiss other people's real concerns and problems with a callous lack of empathy. Divisive people who dismiss others problems if they conflict with their ideology. People who usually end up being the biggest whiners when something like this directly affects them. Like the wealthy and privileged on Martha's Vineyard that are all for wind power. As long as it is somewhere else.

13:03 It’s not so cheap! Remember you have to build an electrolyser (that costs a lot) to make it run just a few hours per day. P.S. Please make a video about Fisher Tropsch 🙏🏻

@1224chrisng

2 күн бұрын

It depends, they could have a high efficiency electrolyzer with expensive membranes, or they could equally have a bunch of lower efficiency ones that stick some cheap carbon rods into the water. If electricity is cheap, then run the cheap one, and when it's expensive, run the expensive one.

@orionbetelgeuse1937

Күн бұрын

@@1224chrisng they keep repeating that the renewable energy is extremely cheap, so chea that sometimes it hasnegative value. Then why is anybody concerned about some minor reduction of the efficiency? Just throw a few additional pv panels or wind turbines and the problem is solved.

Wait... There are STILL manufacturers using gearboxes? I'm out of the field for a few years but back then it seemed they all were switching to gearless systems?! Is this a US thing?

@polterp

2 күн бұрын

There’s certainly plenty of operating turbines using gearboxes, even if newer models had all moved on to DD. So gearbox maintenance is still a hot topic in the industry

@assepa

2 күн бұрын

It's a cost thing. Most if not all onshore turbines have gearboxes. For offshore turbines the cost of maintenance for gearboxes adds up, so there direct drive is more popular.

@fablearchitect7645

2 күн бұрын

I don't think it is really gearless but rather single speed gear. Just like in EVs there is still a reduction gear to boost the torque of the electric motor. Still much lower maintenance then a gearbox with multiple gears used in the older fixed speed wind turbines

I really enjoyed this video. You provide a lot of information and make it accessible.

Loved the video, getting a review of the subject I've studied in electrical engineering, and just doing comparisons with the Chilean grid that has the same problems, even I could say even more problems than Ireland, but is trying out the same solutions.

Another huge downsize is the short lifespans on the blades themselves. And the fact that there still is not an actual cost effective way to recycle them. Here in Wyoming they have a massive pit they still bury them in. TX also has massive plots of lands with just stacks of the things. It kinda grosses me out the waste of those blades. I'd be much more open to wind if that can be solved.

There’s no “gearbox maintenance” outside of checking oil level for a leak (extremely rare), changing the filter, and opening the gear view port to make sure there’s no chipping or excess wear. The 10 year mark for complete oil change is coming up on our moventus boxes but outside of that, “maintenance” takes about 20 minutes a year.

The grid stability and associated frequency conversion problem arises because the manufacturers of the wind turbines are just manufacturers of turbines and not concerned with the overall operation of the grid. An obvious solution arises. Convert the wind energy to DC and take that current to the ground and combine with the other nearby turbines. Then use a DC motor to drive an alternator. As much mass can be built into the coupling shaft as desired. Use several in parallel as desired by scale and economics.

Great video! I would have really liked for you to talk about grid sized battery storage a bit more, as it is such an important piece of the puzzle for dealing with renewable energy grids.

Who knew Ireland's next big export would be wind? 🌬️ Harnessing all that blustery weather for energy is both brilliant and poetic. Cheers to a future where our biggest challenge is keeping the sheep from napping in the turbines!

My wife has to sleep with me. She says I have powerful wind energy

@scilene

2 күн бұрын

First lesbian Bot ever seen

@fablearchitect7645

2 күн бұрын

be gone bot

@jer103

2 күн бұрын

Are you referring to snoring or talking, in bed?

@madrandomize5115

2 күн бұрын

​@@jer103more like farting...

@jer103

2 күн бұрын

​@@madrandomize5115 I didn't think of that, until now. I guess "wind energy" could mean the mouth, or the butt. It's all just air.

Wow, so much information crammed into this. Very well done.

This guy has become more smooth than butter with his segues.

What Ireland needs is a *HUGE* amount of local power storage. This is why the critical factor in renewables is the ability to store power generated and release them when the Sun is not up or the wind is not the right speed.

@rabkad5673

Күн бұрын

An impossible dream I'm afraid

@Validole

Күн бұрын

​@@rabkad5673you claim that based on..?

The gearbox is not coasting multi million dollers. I think price is something arround 500k. Also i think newer Wind Turbines have not a gearbox but a frequency converter to change the frequency.

@joewiddup9753

2 күн бұрын

The 6MW Nordex turbines being assembled South of my house are synchronous and have massive gearing to be directly attached to the grid. I'd bet there is north of $2 million in each gear box.

@assepa

2 күн бұрын

I agree, total cost of a wind turbine can be estimated to be around 1 million euros per 1MW of capacity. Not very likely that a gearbox costs millions, unless perhaps it is in a really big WTG.

@1224chrisng

2 күн бұрын

It probably depends on the size, the big ones cost more

I'm fortunate to live next to the Raheenleagh wind farm, and it's nice to see you make a video about our beautiful island. I always value the science that goes into these equipment since I am an engineer.

Excellent video. Very informative. Thanks for posting.

This video stated that an asynchronous wind turbine does not have the inertia needed to dampen frequency changes in a grid. I don't think this problem is inherent. The wind turbine blades, gear box and rotor are heavy. The inertia is there. It is up to the designer of the inverters to increase load on the turbine blades, which in turns increase the electric output when the grid frequency is dropping.

@pilotavery

2 күн бұрын

But there's already so little energy stored in the moving blades because they are so lightweight. It's like trying to turn a pinwheel. As soon as you put any inertia on it it just stops the pinwheel.

@icekk007

Күн бұрын

@@pilotavery Whether it is a lightweight or not, it is all relative. A Vesta V150 wind turbine, each blade weights 70 metric ton. A wind turbine may be lighter than a steam turbine, but it does have an inertia compared to a solar farm.

@sliwka621

Күн бұрын

​@@pilotaveryLightweight and with a massive aerodynamic drag. The exact opposite of a flywheel.

@pilotavery

Күн бұрын

@@sliwka621 yeah exactly

@mitchellcouchman1444

Күн бұрын

The instantaneous power response of a massive turbine can be several times its generation capacity where as power electronics are typically not rated that highly due to cost and don't react fast enough

My wife has to sleep with me. She says I have powerful wind energy.

@derusmares9508

2 күн бұрын

Thanks for all that renewable energy 👍

@LastGoatKnight

2 күн бұрын

Ask her to collect the natural gases and sell them

@duckface81

2 күн бұрын

probably a lot of natural gas as well

@jamesturner2126

2 күн бұрын

UNALIVED! ☠️

@socallars3748

2 күн бұрын

Un-natural gas?

I've seen a project in Scotland that does a similar thing to those giant flywheels that store excess energy. Its a kinetic "battery" uses excess energy to winch a massive concrete block up an abandoned mineshaft to store energy as gravitational potential. When the energy needs releasing, the block is slowly lowered again and the dropping winch cable fed into a generator through some gearing. Clever!

Modern inverters can now run at a slight variable phase shift relative to the grid frequency to simulate rotational inertia resisting frequency change.

These downsides seem suprisingly manageable

@Scottagram

2 күн бұрын

Yeeep. No matter what the fossil lobby tells the public, the 'impossible hurdles' of a green transition are in fact just very unremarkable engineering challenges. The ancient pyramids probably faced all the same questions. "How do we transport the giant rocks / turbine blades?" "How do we stop them from breaking under their own weight?" "How do we lift them once they arrive on site?" "What are good locations to build these?" "Where do we get the materials from?" "How do we reduce the usage of expensive metals?" "Where will we find enough qualified workers?" "How do we feed everyone in the middle of nowhere?" "How do we avoid straining the entire supply chain?" And with how often pharaohs would simply hijack the tomb of an abandoned pyramid, they even share the same question of "Do we need new infrastructure or can we utilize existing facilities?" Fun fact! The biggest pyramid contains sand imported from Yemen, 1300 miles away. You read that right, someone managed to sell sand to Egypt. It's a soft white grade of sand not naturally found in Egypt, with rounded grains of similar size. When dragging stone blocks across this particular sand, friction was basically halved. A remarkable improvement in efficiency that easily pays for itself. They didn't complain about the project being too big, they just solved the damn problems and did it.

@sliwka621

Күн бұрын

​@@ScottagramYou havent answered any of the questions you posted. The only green tech we have NOW is nuclear. And we live in the present not the future.

@jfuite

16 сағат бұрын

These are not the only downsides.

@a.b3203

10 сағат бұрын

There are even fewer risks with nuclear energy, why does nobody care to invest in that? Green energy is a joke

Snee generator: designed for offshore wave action from any direction, when the generator was brought out of the sea for maintenance it was noted for achieving higher rpms than designed for producing three times the power it did by wave action, instead of the turbine blades extending from the center shaft like a fan, the snee generator sits with its shaft vertical and is basically a squirrel cage fan within a stationary squirrel cage that has its fins angled opposite the angle of the fan blades of which forces the air or water directly against the blades from any direction

@howardsimpson489

5 сағат бұрын

And lots of chopped up fish.

Renewables are actually pretty space inefficient when compared to nuclear power plants. Wind turbines suffer even more when trying to build large wind farms because the more turbines you build close together reduces the efficiency of almost all of the turbines in the wind farm because of the dirty air that comes off of turbines. Nuclear is just such a great energy source it's a shame it's not used more.

always nice to see galway on youtube :) I actually watched them take a wind turbine through the city at about 3-4am in the morning. Complete shutdown of the intersection at terryland/galway shopping center, and the maaaassive blades coming down the street on trucks to head out across the bridge and through west side. Just an amazing effort to even get the turbines to their destination. very very cool.

the answer to any question related to electricity generation is always nuclear fission

@karl0ssus1

Күн бұрын

I mean sure, if the question was which power source is the most expensive and slowest to deploy. Or which has the highest technological and regulatory burden, or which one stops working during heatwaves (actually, that might have been a France specific problem, but still). Nuclear fission is not without its own challenges and I'm getting real sick of seeing these random uncritical "but nuclear" takes on every piece of power generation content.

@sliwka621

Күн бұрын

​@@karl0ssus1You are tired of it because it's the solution to the problem your cultish worldview leaders told you is verboten. It wears down on your damaged pigmy brain.

@anupamsingh3762

Күн бұрын

@@karl0ssus1 nuclear energy is the cleanest form of energy we have right now. I'm not saying to go 100% nuclear as it might bring its own challenges but surely we need to invest more in nuclear energy and less in WIND TURBINES (actually we should get rid of them all imo). Wind turbines take so much unnecessary space, they look awful, depend on wind and MOST IMPORTANTLY take more space than a nuclear power plant will take to produce the same amount of energy. Now coming to coal power plants, i need not explain that we need to burn coal to produce energy which comes with another baggage of Greenhouse gases. Not to mention, coal is a non-renewable source of energy and countries that do not have mines have to depend highly on the ones that do. Now coming to solar, which actually might be a better choice than wind turbines BUT ONLY if done at an individual scale. Large scale solar power parks look awful and AGAIN LIKE WIND TURBINES, TAKE A LOT OF SPACE. Like I said before it could be a good idea if people used solar panels on their rooftops. At last, I would say that we definitely need a mix of all the available choices but for the reasons mentioned, NUCLEAR GOOD AND WIND TURBINES BAD.

@troglokev

Күн бұрын

Xenon-135.

@kowalityjesus

Күн бұрын

@@karl0ssus1 You're right nuclear energy is unreliable. That's why we should deploy generation technologies that depend entirely on the weather.

Nuclear for Australia confirmed

Very good video, i thought i knew everythjng about wind energy but learned a couple new things

I so enjoy your content. I learn so much. Thank you, sincerely.

I’ve worked with the Haliade X turbines and in person they are incredibly big! Looks like a small block of flats lol

@6:12 Texan here. The “many people” who blamed wind turbines for the 2021 blackouts were fossil fuel advocates like conservative politicians, the type of people who will take any excuse to trash renewable energy. The blackouts were almost entirely caused by inadequate winterization of natural gas infrastructure and electricity distribution infrastructure (though, yes, federal regulations would have mandated better winterization), not anything to do with wind power. Seasonal wind patterns mean less wind is generated in Texas during the winter than in other seasons, but during the 2021 power crisis wind power generation was actually exceeding expectations for that time of year. If anyone is interested I can link in-depth reporting on the blackouts that explains all this.

An interesting more economical solution is variable pricing on the consumer side. Companies can vary the price minute by minute to portray the supply/demand relationship at any given moment

@martinhammett8121

24 минут бұрын

I think a few companies do already ! Agile Octopus gets customers to use power at certain times by paying them, & to put back in stored energy from their home battery at other times paying them a premium

I like how the shafted gears at 2:04 are turning in opposite directions at the ends and the generator shaft is turning slower than the input shaft.

Another problem with large wind converters is the mass of the mass of the direct drive motors. Especially the large 10+ MW machines are not feasibly due to the huge weight of the magnetic components. An EU project of a few years ago demonstrated a 3.6 MW DD generator using superconducting DC coils instead of permanent magnets, in which the generator weight could be reduces by 40%. My colleagues at the University of Twente were responsible for the high temperature superconducting coils (which were build by Theva in Germany) and the cryogenic systems. The machine was succesfully build and tested in-situ in the North of Denmark, it contributed to the grid for more than 650 hours.

@assepa

2 күн бұрын

Larger than 10+ MW direct drive WTG's are quite feasible and are in fact already in production, for example the Siemens Gamesa 14,7MW is such a beast.

@WouterVerbruggen

10 сағат бұрын

@@assepa They can be made, but costly structures are needed to mount them and support them in the ground. Even more expensive, if not practically impossible in some places, is transporting them to the installation site and hoisting it all up.

@assepa

42 минут бұрын

@@WouterVerbruggen I'm not convinced they weigh that much more. You are saving an entire gearbox after all, plus the structure that holds the gearbox, plus the low speed shaft towards the gearbox. If I look for instance at the Siemens SWT-3.0DD it is still a pretty sleek design, so it seems that the direct drive rotor doesn't necessarily need a lot of extra diameter.

@WouterVerbruggen

16 минут бұрын

@@assepa SWT-3.0DD seems to be a small 3MW machine. Scaling up, you need a lot more magnetic mass. I don't have numbers on hand. As for the scope of the EcoSwing project, you can read about it in section 1.2 of the PhD thesis of Anne Bergen, which can be found on our university website (Uni. of Twente)

Not to mention the waste being created with the worn-out blades or the birds being killed in large numbers in places like the Columbia River Gorge. Meanwhile, governments are straying away from nuclear power, which is both clean and efficient especially with modern technology and can even run on the current waste fuel supplies.

@drunkenhobo8020

2 күн бұрын

Because nuclear is hideously expensive. And the birds thing is just anti-wind propaganda. They're no worse than any other building.

@kowalityjesus

Күн бұрын

@@drunkenhobo8020 I think everyone who wants renewable energy should sign up to have their electricity supply shut off when the wind stops blowing. We wouldn't need any such undersea cables that send nuclear energy from France.

In Germany, there are some cool projects going on, to run server farms inside the towers. It’s a massive concrete structure that slowly warms up. Windfarms topically have high bandwidth connections. You can run the servers at variable power levels depending on the grid situation. Rittal is doing some pretty cool work together with the University of Marburg i think.

The resilience of inverter based resources is a challenge. Since we're picking on TX, there was an event in Odessa in 2021, where a hick-up caused by a conventional plant caused a whole lot of solar and wind energy farms to fail one after another. A major issue in the report was installers in multiple cases not setting the protective devices correctly so they tripped far too quickly and it was only the synchronous generation with inertia that prevented it from becoming far worse. By all means, lets get more solar and wind out there, but keep in mind the challenges and maybe some hydro/geo/nuclear around where possible.

Should add a gravity power storage system, too.

@madriverskier

2 күн бұрын

While they can be a good solution, the environmental impact (unless repurposing an existing reservoir) and the efficiency losses make them a tough sell. But definitely one of the better options

@Syritis

2 күн бұрын

Real Engineering has a video on pumped storage, the biggest problem is the location, finding two reservoir with a high elevation difference is difficult.

A lot of the problems you discuss here either aren't nearly as much of a problem as implied or have pretty much already been solved. I feel like this video is based on information from 10 years ago.

@OveranalyzingEverything

Күн бұрын

That's just not true at all.

@DoRC

Күн бұрын

@@OveranalyzingEverything Read some of the comments by people who actually work in the industry. You'll see what I'm talking about.

@wizz1358

Күн бұрын

Electrical engineer here. While what it's said in the video is true, in the sense that wind turbines do have problems (like LITERALLY EVERY OTHER KIND OF GENERATOR), most of the problems already present solutions, some cheap, some expensive. I remember reading a paper talking about repurposing thermal plants to have their generators connected to the grid without generating/consuming energy, just spinning, so that they can basically be use as a flywheel to stabilize the grid when a power surge appears.

Great timing on vid... one burnt to the ground couple of nights ago in my local. Great show for a quiet town lol

The transition to sponsor ad is so smooth. (and I always appreciate that :-D

Somebody fell for a joke some of us down south here in Texas say sometimes. When some people sometimes ask, "what are those bug fans used for?" My brother to somebody from KY, "those are big fans. When it gets too hot, we turn them on to cool down" Dad joke certified

6:59 One lucky bird!

Ah I loved Galway, when I had an opportunity to present during a conference there during my physics PhD. Really looking forward to visit again one day!

“Faster wind means more power” is an understatement. The maximum power output of a wind turbine is proportional to the CUBE of wind velocity. The kinetic energy of a volume of wind goes a velocity squared, and then we also need to account for the fact that faster wind means a larger volume of wind contacting the turbine per unit time.

I was not aware of this gearbox problem. Is it round ball bearings? Can it be due to wind bursts? Cooling issue? Isn't the gearbox made to jump a tooth every rotation to prevent wear on a spot? (this could be solved with a different sniping rate on the blades no?) I maintain nuclear power seems to be the greenest energy.

@assepa

2 күн бұрын

I think the main problem is: how to avoid deformations causing stress in the gearbox. Of course you can avoid deformations by adding material, but you also need to lift the thing on top of the tower. So I guess there is some optimisation there that maybe occasionally goes wrong.

Most of the shots in this video are not of Ireland, they drive on the left.

I love how in this Video you are uniquely able to see which clips are shown in reverse, as the blades spin the wrong way.

Little old Ireland is a world leader in addressing thechallenges of integrating large amounts of wind power with the grid. Good on ya