What I'm wondering about is a storage facility that is incorporated in the windmill itself. We live in a very flat area and every village has a water tower. This fits on a lot not much larger than a typical house site. Ground water is pumped up (about 100 feet or 30 meters) and then gravity is used to provide the water pressure to the homes. Just imagine if each water tower had a windmill on top, or rather that each windmill was on top of a water tank. The water doesn't need to be part of any municipal system it could just shuttle between an underground and raised tank. How large would the tank need to be (or how high) to store a reasonable amount of power and how would this affect the economics of the project?

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

http://www.evworld.com/library/abrooks_carb_nov2_05.pdf

Hydrogen Production with Electricity

65 kWh per kg : Stuart datasheet, and
as derived from Honda's published data
on solar hydrogen station

• Includes electrolysis and compression
  
• In a fuel cell, 1 kg of hydrogen produces
  

about 16 kWh of electricity to drive the
wheels (50% efficiency)
* 65 kWh in; 16 kWh out
Overall efficiency 25%;
75% of input energy is lost

Also found this

http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309091632/html/227.html

Hydrogen Production by Electrolysis from Wind Power

Hydrogen production from wind power and electrolysis is a particularly interesting proposition since, as just discussed, among renewable sources, wind power is economically the most competitive, with electricity prices at 4 to 5 cents/kWh at the best wind sites (without subsidies). This means that wind power can generate hydrogen at lower costs than those for any of the other renewable options available today.

In the committee's analysis, it considered wind deployed on a distributed scale, thus bypassing the extra costs and requirements of hydrogen distribution. Since hydrogen from wind energy can be produced close to where it will be used, there is a clear role for it to play in the early years of hydrogen infrastructure development, especially as the committee believes that a hydrogen economy is most likely, at least initially, to develop in a distributed manner.

For distributed wind-electrolysis-hydrogen generation systems, it is estimated that by using today's technologies hydrogen can be produced at good wind sites (class 4 and above) without a production tax credit for approximately $6.64/kg H2, using grid electricity as backup for when the wind is not blowing. The committee's analysis considers a system that uses the grid as backup to alleviate the capital underutilization of the electrolyzer with a wind capacity factor of 30 percent. It assumes an average cost of electricity generated by wind of 6 cents/kWh (including transmission costs), while the cost of grid electricity is pegged at 7 cents/kWh, a typical commercial rate. This hybrid hydrogen production system has pros and cons. It reduces the cost of producing the hydrogen, which without grid backup would otherwise be $10.69/kg H2, but it also incurs CO2 emissions from what would otherwise be an emission-free hydrogen production system. The CO2 emissions are a product of using grid electricity; they are 3.35 kg C per kilogram of hydrogen.

In the future the wind-electrolysis-hydrogen system could be substantially optimized. The wind turbine technology could improve, reducing the cost of electricity to 4 cents/kWh with an increased capacity factor of 40 percent, as discussed previously, and the electrolyzer could also come down substantially in cost and could increase in efficiency (see the discussion in the section "Hydrogen from Electrolysis"). The combination of the increase in capacity factor and the reduction in the capital cost of the electrolyzer and cost of wind-generated electricity results in eliminating the need for using grid electricity (price still pegged at 7 cents/kWh) as a backup. The wind machines and the electrolyzer are assumed to be made large enough that sufficient hydrogen can be generated during the 40 percent of the time that the wind turbines are assumed to provide electricity. Due to the assumed reductions in the cost of the electrolyzer and the cost of wind-turbine-generated electricity, this option is now less costly than using a smaller electrolyzer and purchasing grid-supplied electricity when the wind turbine is not generating electricity. Hydrogen produced in this manner from wind with no grid backup is estimated to cost $2.85/kg H2, while for the alternative system with grid backup it is $3.38/kg H2. Furthermore, there is now the added advantage of a hydrogen production system that is CO2-emission free. The results of the committee's analysis are summarized in Table G-8.

Wind-electrolysis-hydrogen production systems are currently far from optimized. For example, the design of wind turbines has to date been geared toward electricity production, not hydrogen. To optimize for better hydrogen production, integrated power control systems between the wind turbine and electrolyzer need to be analyzed, as should hydrogen storage tailored to the wind turbine design. Furthermore, there is the potential to design a system that can coproduce electricity and hydrogen from wind. Under the right circumstances this could be more cost-effective and

http://www.efcf.com/reports/E05.pdf

Most report are negative about the use of hydrogen (especially because of low density).

I still think people underestimate the NIMBY issue, we may not have much land spots that meet all requirements (and it would be just like oil politically some with it some without)

Now, if we want to take advantage of offshore wind to store energy for later use, what else?

Grow some alguae, jolt them and bingo methane or something? :)

It is, indeed, common to site it away from river/lake, to avoid the conventional hydro regulatory burden.

This is sometimes called "modular" ... because it can be produced from modular components rather than tailored to each site like a conventional hydro installation.

There would seem to be quite a large number of suitable sites (100m+ drop) in the Southwest for the solar resource in the desert Southwest, in the Mountain West for the wind resource in the Dakotas, and in the Appalachias for the wind resource in the Great Lakes.

Indeed, this would be an interesting target for a feebate program ... using taxes on externalities involved with fossil fuels to fund the capital costs of this kind of support infrastructure for renewable resources.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.