Other renewable energy sources

• Hydropower• Wind energy• Ocean Thermal • Biomass• Geothermal• Tidal

Hydropower• Well established electrical generation technology, about 100 years

old• Known for over 2000 years that the force of moving water on a

water wheel could save human labor• 13th century-hammers in iron works in Europe were operated with

waterwheels.• 16th century –primary source of industrial power in Europe• In the US, mills were established at sites with reliable water flow

and dams were constructed to regulate water flow.– Cave mill here in BG. Several hydro powered mills for corn, flour and

sawing in the 19th century existed on this site at different times. • With the advent of electricity, water wheels were used to drive

electricity generation.• About 7% of US energy generation is from hydroelectric plants

The physics of Hydropower• Gravitational potential energy in the water at a height h above the wheel

is converted to kinetic energy of the wheel which drives a turbine and generates electricity.

• So each mass element of water, m, falls a distance h and attain a velocity v. So its initial potential energy is mgh, where g is the acceleration due to gravity (9.8m/s2) and the kinetic energy is 1/2mv2.

• This tells us the amount of potential energy available to be converted to kinetic energy is 9.8 joules per kilogram of water per meter of height above the wheel.

• h is often called the head.• Efficiencies of 80-90% can be achieved.• Power = (Height of Dam (distance the water falls)) x (River Flow) x

(Efficiency) / 11.8 where the height is in feet, river flow is in cubic feet per second ,

efficiency is what you expect and 11.8 converts from feet and seconds to killowatts

Plant operation

Hydro Turbine

Net exploitable hydropower resources

Advantages

• No Pollution• No waste heat• High efficiency• Plants have decades long lifetimes and low

maintenance costs• Good response to changing electricity demands• Damming of rivers can serve other purposes:

flood control, irrigation, drinking water supply

Limitations• About 50% of the US capacity for Hydro is developed• Limited lifetimes for certain reservoirs-as the fill with silt,

they become less useful for water storage. But the dam must be maintained long term, if it fails, communities downstream are in danger from the tremendous volume of silt that would be released.

• Loss of free flowing streams due to damming and the loss of the lands flooded by damming a river-environmental impacts– Salmon population in the Nothwest has been impacted

• Flood risk due to dam failures– Currently hundreds thousands of people in danger if dam

failures occur

Fish Ladders

• Solution to the salmon problem - have not been very effective

Wind power• Not subject to day night cycles• Direct result of solar heating of the Earth’s

atmosphere• Use of wind for energy first noticed by sailors -

the old sailing ships could extract the equivalent of 10,000 hp from the wind!

• Windmills were prevalent in Europe in the 19th century

• Several million were pumping water in the US in the early 1900s

WHAT YOU’RE PROBABLY THINKING OF….

Power in a windmill• The power in the wind can be calculated by P/m2 =6.1 X

10-4v3

• This gives the power in kilowatts per meter squared, where the cross sectional area is oriented perpendicular to the wind direction.

• This is the total power, of course not all of it can be extracted. According to Betz’s Law, developed in 1919 by German physicist Albert Betz, no turbine can capture more than 59.3 percent of the potential energy in wind.

• However, the total amount of economically extractable power available from the wind is considerably more than present human power use from all sources!

Extracting the energy: The turbine

• The world's first automatically operated wind turbine was built in Cleveland in 1888 by Charles F. Brush. It was 60 feet tall, weighed four tons and had 12kW turbine.

Turbine types:• 2 types, based on the

direction of the axis that the turbine rotates about.

• Horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT) -the turbine rotates around an axis that is horizontal.

• Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWT) –the turbine rotates around a vertical axis

HAWT

• Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines• main rotor shaft and electrical generator are

locate at at the top of a tower, and must be pointed into the wind.

• Small turbines are pointed by a simple wind vane, while large turbines generally use a wind sensor coupled with a servo motor.

• Most have a gearbox, which turns the slow rotation of the blades into a quicker rotation that is more suitable to drive an electrical generator.

HAWT

• the turbine is usually pointed upwind of the tower since it creates turbulence behind it.

• Turbine blades are made stiff to prevent the blades from being pushed into the tower by high winds.

• The blades are placed a considerable distance in front of the tower and are sometimes tilted up a small amount.

HAWT Advantages

• Variable blade pitch so the turbine collects the maximum amount of wind energy for the time of day and season.

• The tall tower base allows access to stronger wind in sites with wind shear. In some wind shear sites, every ten meters up, the wind speed can increase by 20% and the power output by 34%.

• High efficiency, since the blades always move perpendicularly to the wind, receiving power through the whole rotation.

HAWT Disadvantages• The tall towers and blades up to 90 meters long are difficult to transport.

Transportation can be 20% of equipment costs.• Tall HAWTs are difficult to install, needing very tall and expensive cranes

and skilled operators.• Massive tower construction is required to support the heavy blades,

gearbox, and generator.• Reflections from tall HAWTs may affect side lobes of radar installations

creating signal clutter, although filtering can suppress it.• Their height makes them obtrusively visible across large areas, disrupting

the appearance of the landscape and sometimes creating local opposition.• Downwind variants suffer from fatigue and structural failure caused by

turbulence when a blade passes through the tower's wind shadow (for this reason, the majority of HAWTs use an upwind design, with the rotor facing the wind in front of the tower).

• HAWTs require an additional yaw control mechanism to turn the blades toward the wind.