While the President of the United States encourages the use of coal, in Germany, abandoned mines are turning into huge reservoirs of renewable energy
By Dr. Daniel Mader, Zivata, Science and Environment News Agency
Since then, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, entered the White House Working to bring back the use of coal in the US. Elsewhere, however, they continue to work vigorously to end the path of polluting coal as a major energy source.
Thus, for example, on April 21 this year, we noted in Great Britain, the birthplace of the industrial revolution, One full day in which he creates electricity without using coal at all) – for the first time in almost 240 years. in Germany There are plans to turn a 50-year-old coal mine, which is expected to be closed in 2018, into a pumped storage project, which will be used as a huge accumulator for storing electrical energy from renewable sources.
One of the biggest obstacles facing the large-scale implementation of renewable energies is the fact that solar and wind energy generation today is not stable And depends a lot on the weather (although the day is close to it Wind turbines will be able to provide electricity with a power factor similar to that of fossil fuel based power plants). One of the proposed solutions that have already begun to be implemented is energy storage for use at a later date.
Pumped storage
One of the most promising ways to store energy is the creation of potential kinetic energy. How It Works? Raise some weight to a height by investing available energy, where it waits for the time of need. When it is necessary to use the kinetic energy, the weight is allowed to fall down while producing electrical energy, which is easy to conduct and share in the electrical network. Today it is customary to store potential kinetic energy through pumped storage - that is, water is stored in an upper reservoir (which is usually located on a mountain) with the help of energy produced from solar panels or wind turbines. When there is no sun, or when the wind is not blowing, water can be allowed to flow from the upper reservoir, by gravity, through vertical shafts and turbines that generate electricity, to a lower reservoir. The downward movement of water generates electricity in turbines.
This technology is simple, available and relatively cheap compared to other solutions under development, such as, for example, Huge electrochemical batteries that will store electricity for buildings and cities.
In the Ruhr area in Germany there are facilities for generating renewable energy, but there are no towering mountains and valleys that allow the construction of pumped storage projects, which would enable the storage of excess electricity from these facilities. What there is a lot of in the Ruhr, however, are abandoned coal mines, or ones that are close to the end of their lives.
In this case, 1 plus 1 really equals 2. German engineers plan to build an upper reservoir at the top of the Prosper-Haniel coal mine, and turn the bottom of the mine, which is 600 meters deep, into a lower reservoir. The mine's system of shafts and tunnels will allow the water to flow up and down. Thus, the abandoned coal mine, a symbol of the polluting fossil fuels that have passed their time, will become a building block in a renewable electricity network, supplying electricity to approximately 400 homes.
Golden energy
If this development proves itself, Germany intends to reproduce it in additional coal mines. A project of this type (or like The Australian Project in which an abandoned gold mine will become the site of a pumped storage), is an excellent example not only of the way in which local resources that are considered waste or a hazard can be utilized, but also of the way to create jobs in the field of renewable energies and a smart electricity grid, in areas that previously relied on jobs in the fossil fuel market.
In Israel, too, a pumped storage project is being built in Gilboa and the spring valley, and another project is planned in the Manara area. At the same time, unfortunately, we are still not talking about storing renewable energy, but only about storing water at night when the demand for electricity is low and its price is cheap, and releasing the water and producing electricity during the day, when the demand for electricity is high and its price accordingly.
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One response
"potential kinetic energy" - once, maybe a typo. But twice? Dr. Meder - Please buy a high school science book and remember some physics.