Batteries, wind turbine and geo-probe: an experiment to obtain "green" energy in different parts of the Russian Federation
A few months ago we launched a large-scale experiment and mounted two objects using alternative energy. The task is to understand whether autonomous complexes of small capacity can work more or less stably and have a commercial perspective in the Russian Federation.
New generation salt battery
There are still half a year before the final results, but there are already unusual things: for example, a geo probe was launched for cooling (unique, most likely will go into a series), tests of a salt battery of a new generation were conducted (but it will have to be changed to normal because of the budget), plus surprisingly well proved themselves in difficult conditions domestic solar cells manufactured by Zelenograd.
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There are many remote locations where, for example, telecom equipment, continuous power supply of small capacity is required, and there is no ready-made power supply network. For example, base stations and other objects in the mountains, on islands, in other hard-to-reach or remote places, where it is very expensive to draw a line. Usually in such cases a diesel is put, but it requires the delivery of fuel (often by helicopter), which is also very expensive.
In such cases, it is possible to turn to alternative energy. One of the main questions is whether it will pay off. To understand this, you need to compare the cost of "green" energy and the cost of "traditional". Moreover, the case must reckon with a long-term perspective: for example, taking into account all capital and operating costs for 10 years.
To start the experiment, we took an object where there is already power from the city, and deployed an infrastructure for organizing autonomous power supply there. If the "alternative" can not cope, we always have the opportunity to hedge the city. The second experimental object is completely autonomous. A low-power diesel generator is used as a backup source. One object is located in the south-eastern part of the Russian Federation, the second - on the coast of the Barents Sea (more precisely, unfortunately, I have no right).
A few months before the start of the installation, we set up autonomous weather stations and for quite a long time we monitored the situation with the sun, wind and the weather in general. It turned out that on the first object it is justified to install a wind generator and solar panels, on the second one (this is the polar region) the sun is worse, therefore there is only a wind turbine on it.
Equipment on objects is different for the purpose of expanding the experiment. The wind generator was taken Israeli: there is a manufacturer, specially making the equipment of a simplified configuration for objects with undeveloped infrastructure. Our wind turbine is “minimalist”, with a passive wind orientation system (without a drive). This is both reliable and lowers the cost. Equipment of this class, by the way, is successfully used in Africa and the Middle East.
Automation shield
The equipment of the base station of the telecom operator operates from 48 volts, and has its own reserve for 3-4 hours of operation when the external source falls. The entire system is air-cooled. At the same time, for example, the base station equipment itself consumes 500 watts, and exactly the same amount is required for the operation of the cooling system. Accordingly, the first thing that comes to mind is to try to reduce the cost of cooling.
We solved this problem with the help of a geosonde. In our country, it was with the purpose of cooling that this solution was applied, it seems, for the first time. The principle is this: the earth at a depth of 5 meters and deeper has a constant temperature of +4 to +8 degrees (this is well known to the builders of the cellars). It gets warm deeper, then it gets even warmer, but this is already at a depth of 1 km and beyond: we don’t dig there, for example, in Iceland’s engineers. In general, we decided to use this natural fridge. In a well with a depth of 30-50 meters, a special plastic pipe was lowered and closed on a heat exchanger with a fan. There is also a pump in the system that consumes only about 15 watts of electricity plus strapping fittings.
In general, geozond is usually used for heat pumps that work on heating - this is common practice. The soil is actually frozen and gives off its heat: using a heat pump, you can raise the temperature of the coolant to 30-40 degrees and heat the house. In our case, on the contrary, the ground warms up, and the water is cooled to 17-18 degrees, thanks to which 25 degrees inside the room are quietly obtained. Due to this, the total energy consumption of the cooling system has decreased significantly. Total BS requires 15 watts per pump and 15 watts per fan on a fan coil - that's only 30, not 500, as it was before.
On the second object under the ground - granite, there geo probe is not applicable. Therefore, there is a ventilation unit, which drives through the base station container filtered air from the street and thereby cools the room. There is no heat, the absolute maximum temperature in this geographic point is low, so this solution works well.
Fancoil (heat exchanger with fan)
The wind turbine is connected to a controller, providing 48 volts at the outlet. Next in the chain - the battery. There is wind - the battery is charging, no wind - discharged. As soon as the battery voltage reaches the lower threshold, the system switches the power to the city. If it reaches the upper threshold, the automation switches the base station to alternative power, and uses it as long as there is wind.
The battery was used unusual salt, in the Russian Federation, it is not yet used. It is small, 5 times smaller in size and weight than similar lead batteries. They gave it to us to test old foreign partners. The battery is good for everyone - compact, lightweight, has a huge resource, unpretentious, but, unfortunately, expensive and consumes an additional 100 watts of electrical power, because it is necessary to maintain a temperature of about 300 degrees inside it, because the molten salt is one of the battery's agents. Usually, this drawback is not so obvious, but in the case of alternative energy, the struggle goes for every watt. The high price forces capacity to be limited, and the battery capacity is a crucially important parameter in our case. I would like to have a supply of energy at least a day of battery life. There is such a trick: when the wind is very strong and the battery capacity is insufficient, our wind turbine charges them very quickly. The rest of the energy has to be dumped, just to warm the air - there is nowhere to be stored.
In addition, in the tests work solar cells Zelenograd production. They, by the way, are very inexpensive, 15,000 rubles for one plate. This, by the way, is a single-crystal version with a resource of decades. The price is such precisely because they are made in Russia: for such money, the western manufacturer can only find batteries made using cheaper technologies. Ours, by the way, actually show the declared capacity: on sunny July noon they give out 200 watts each. On the following objects, most likely, we will put more solar panels. The sun and the windmill complement each other well during the day.
Wind generator
We used a high-performance inverter that converts 48 V DC to 220 V AC. Although all communication equipment in the base station requires 48 volts, the air conditioner needs 220 volts. Because on each conversion, about 10% of energy is lost, in new facilities we will try to completely eliminate 220 V consumers.
Inverter (blue box)
Explicit savings can only count the customer: it depends on the point where you plan to mount the object. Suppose, only to submit a power line to the island costs 2 million rubles. If an alternative system is cheaper, then it is better.
It is already clear that for many people geo-cooling is exactly suitable. It is cheap, almost like air conditioning at a cost. If there is a river or a lake nearby, then you can even build a data center. Americans do just that: they throw heat exchangers into the lake, and cool the data centers, trying to heat the lake. Of course, the lake is stronger than any data center, so there are no problems with the temperature.
In general, while the flight is going fine. In the next six months (or a little more), we will continue to collect statistics, optimize the solution and obtain a refined calculation, which, I hope, will allow us to introduce a solution into the series.
Already a good field of application is planned: all federal highways must be equipped with cellular communication. There is no place to take electricity there - there seems to be lighting, but it’s impossible to eat from it: telecoms and those involved in the light are different structures, and no one will share energy so easily. Plus, of course, to the same telecoms these solutions will be very useful for creating base stations in difficult terrain.
New generation salt battery
There are still half a year before the final results, but there are already unusual things: for example, a geo probe was launched for cooling (unique, most likely will go into a series), tests of a salt battery of a new generation were conducted (but it will have to be changed to normal because of the budget), plus surprisingly well proved themselves in difficult conditions domestic solar cells manufactured by Zelenograd.
')
Introductory
There are many remote locations where, for example, telecom equipment, continuous power supply of small capacity is required, and there is no ready-made power supply network. For example, base stations and other objects in the mountains, on islands, in other hard-to-reach or remote places, where it is very expensive to draw a line. Usually in such cases a diesel is put, but it requires the delivery of fuel (often by helicopter), which is also very expensive.
In such cases, it is possible to turn to alternative energy. One of the main questions is whether it will pay off. To understand this, you need to compare the cost of "green" energy and the cost of "traditional". Moreover, the case must reckon with a long-term perspective: for example, taking into account all capital and operating costs for 10 years.
We check in practice
To start the experiment, we took an object where there is already power from the city, and deployed an infrastructure for organizing autonomous power supply there. If the "alternative" can not cope, we always have the opportunity to hedge the city. The second experimental object is completely autonomous. A low-power diesel generator is used as a backup source. One object is located in the south-eastern part of the Russian Federation, the second - on the coast of the Barents Sea (more precisely, unfortunately, I have no right).
A few months before the start of the installation, we set up autonomous weather stations and for quite a long time we monitored the situation with the sun, wind and the weather in general. It turned out that on the first object it is justified to install a wind generator and solar panels, on the second one (this is the polar region) the sun is worse, therefore there is only a wind turbine on it.
Equipment on objects is different for the purpose of expanding the experiment. The wind generator was taken Israeli: there is a manufacturer, specially making the equipment of a simplified configuration for objects with undeveloped infrastructure. Our wind turbine is “minimalist”, with a passive wind orientation system (without a drive). This is both reliable and lowers the cost. Equipment of this class, by the way, is successfully used in Africa and the Middle East.
Automation shield
Geozond
The equipment of the base station of the telecom operator operates from 48 volts, and has its own reserve for 3-4 hours of operation when the external source falls. The entire system is air-cooled. At the same time, for example, the base station equipment itself consumes 500 watts, and exactly the same amount is required for the operation of the cooling system. Accordingly, the first thing that comes to mind is to try to reduce the cost of cooling.
We solved this problem with the help of a geosonde. In our country, it was with the purpose of cooling that this solution was applied, it seems, for the first time. The principle is this: the earth at a depth of 5 meters and deeper has a constant temperature of +4 to +8 degrees (this is well known to the builders of the cellars). It gets warm deeper, then it gets even warmer, but this is already at a depth of 1 km and beyond: we don’t dig there, for example, in Iceland’s engineers. In general, we decided to use this natural fridge. In a well with a depth of 30-50 meters, a special plastic pipe was lowered and closed on a heat exchanger with a fan. There is also a pump in the system that consumes only about 15 watts of electricity plus strapping fittings.
In general, geozond is usually used for heat pumps that work on heating - this is common practice. The soil is actually frozen and gives off its heat: using a heat pump, you can raise the temperature of the coolant to 30-40 degrees and heat the house. In our case, on the contrary, the ground warms up, and the water is cooled to 17-18 degrees, thanks to which 25 degrees inside the room are quietly obtained. Due to this, the total energy consumption of the cooling system has decreased significantly. Total BS requires 15 watts per pump and 15 watts per fan on a fan coil - that's only 30, not 500, as it was before.
On the second object under the ground - granite, there geo probe is not applicable. Therefore, there is a ventilation unit, which drives through the base station container filtered air from the street and thereby cools the room. There is no heat, the absolute maximum temperature in this geographic point is low, so this solution works well.
Fancoil (heat exchanger with fan)
Wind generator and solar panels
The wind turbine is connected to a controller, providing 48 volts at the outlet. Next in the chain - the battery. There is wind - the battery is charging, no wind - discharged. As soon as the battery voltage reaches the lower threshold, the system switches the power to the city. If it reaches the upper threshold, the automation switches the base station to alternative power, and uses it as long as there is wind.
The battery was used unusual salt, in the Russian Federation, it is not yet used. It is small, 5 times smaller in size and weight than similar lead batteries. They gave it to us to test old foreign partners. The battery is good for everyone - compact, lightweight, has a huge resource, unpretentious, but, unfortunately, expensive and consumes an additional 100 watts of electrical power, because it is necessary to maintain a temperature of about 300 degrees inside it, because the molten salt is one of the battery's agents. Usually, this drawback is not so obvious, but in the case of alternative energy, the struggle goes for every watt. The high price forces capacity to be limited, and the battery capacity is a crucially important parameter in our case. I would like to have a supply of energy at least a day of battery life. There is such a trick: when the wind is very strong and the battery capacity is insufficient, our wind turbine charges them very quickly. The rest of the energy has to be dumped, just to warm the air - there is nowhere to be stored.
In addition, in the tests work solar cells Zelenograd production. They, by the way, are very inexpensive, 15,000 rubles for one plate. This, by the way, is a single-crystal version with a resource of decades. The price is such precisely because they are made in Russia: for such money, the western manufacturer can only find batteries made using cheaper technologies. Ours, by the way, actually show the declared capacity: on sunny July noon they give out 200 watts each. On the following objects, most likely, we will put more solar panels. The sun and the windmill complement each other well during the day.
Wind generator
Inverter
We used a high-performance inverter that converts 48 V DC to 220 V AC. Although all communication equipment in the base station requires 48 volts, the air conditioner needs 220 volts. Because on each conversion, about 10% of energy is lost, in new facilities we will try to completely eliminate 220 V consumers.
Inverter (blue box)
Implementation
Explicit savings can only count the customer: it depends on the point where you plan to mount the object. Suppose, only to submit a power line to the island costs 2 million rubles. If an alternative system is cheaper, then it is better.
It is already clear that for many people geo-cooling is exactly suitable. It is cheap, almost like air conditioning at a cost. If there is a river or a lake nearby, then you can even build a data center. Americans do just that: they throw heat exchangers into the lake, and cool the data centers, trying to heat the lake. Of course, the lake is stronger than any data center, so there are no problems with the temperature.
In general, while the flight is going fine. In the next six months (or a little more), we will continue to collect statistics, optimize the solution and obtain a refined calculation, which, I hope, will allow us to introduce a solution into the series.
Already a good field of application is planned: all federal highways must be equipped with cellular communication. There is no place to take electricity there - there seems to be lighting, but it’s impossible to eat from it: telecoms and those involved in the light are different structures, and no one will share energy so easily. Plus, of course, to the same telecoms these solutions will be very useful for creating base stations in difficult terrain.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/148793/
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