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dandy72 wrote: Isn't that pretty much what Tesla's batteries are said to be doing for Australia's power grid?
Well comment in the article would not suggest a real solution to me.
"But how can a strictly backup power source that supplies power for just an hour make such a huge difference?"
Wind/solar must be able to deal with outages much longer than that.
Just a brief look at the rest suggests that it isn't even trying but is rather just to provide smoothing for surges.
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dandy72 wrote: Don't they have huge battery banks that could use some recharging for when the sun doesn't shine?
They would have to be SUPER huge, at an enormous cost (and consumption of raw materials).
There are a few thermoelectric (read: very slow adjustment of power output) power plants that use battery banks for handling fluctuations in power demands - faster than what the plant itself can handle. The capacity must be sufficient to handle the fluctuations, not the base consumption, typically over one day, from a single power plant.
Do some back-of-envelope how many battery cells you would need to conserve any significant amount of electric power! For a small example: The most popular Li-Ion cell today is the 18650 (it is used by a large share of electric cars). The better variants can store 10 Wh. A cell weighs 50 g. Say that your Canadian rivers are overflowing in summer, so you let your 150 GW of installed power run at full speed, saving half of it by charging batteries for the winter season. 75 GW effect produces 75 billion Wh per hour. You would need to supply 7.5 billion 18650 cells, at weight of 375 tons, per hour to handle this amount. That is 180 billion cells at 9 000 tons a day, 5.4 trillion cells at 270,000 tons a month. This is for saving half of Canada's installed capacity from spring/summer for use the coming winter.
Batteries are suitable for small scale use, up to (at most) road vehicles. In power production, they may possibly be suitable for handling fluctuations. For the latter: The number of charge cycles will be high, most likely a minimum of one cycle a day. If you want to use it with tidal power, you have four cycles a day. It seems like if you restrict Li-Ion cells to the middle 60% capacity, never discharge below 20% and never charge above 80%, they can survive more cycles than the early estimates indicated, yet in a tidal power station taking them though 1500 cycles a year, you should budget a significant sum of money for cell replacements.
Tidal power is a kind and well behaved energy source - 100% predictable, both in time and volume. For wind, you never know how many cycles your batteries will have to take in a year. You can't tell when they will be sucked completely empty, nor when they will overflow. While Californians may think that solar energy is predictable, it certainly is not here in Norway. And in any case we would require seasonal energy storage. Although I am living south of the Polar Circle, the sun is so low (both in altitude and hours) for 4 months a year that the radiation has no value as an energy source. Almost half of Norway's area is north of the Polar Circle: The towns and villages along the northern coast of Norway have a polar night of around 60 days.
Batteries are not the solution for huge (call it "town sized") long term storage of electric power.
If you've got a thousand meter tall mountain in your backyard, you may of course learn from those talking enthusiastically about pumping water uphill to be used as hydropower downhill at a later stage. So let us dig up another envelope  To save 1 kWh of electricity, you would have to pump 400 liters of water up on that 1000 m peak. You have to build a basin at the peak, and a basin at the foot of the mountain to collect the water, to have something to pump up for the next cycle. At winter time, my house consumes not 1 but 50 kWh on a typical winter day, so it would take 20,000 liters (or let us call it 20 cubic meters) of water, per winter day. Every house down the street, and all the neighboring streets, would require 20 cubic meters per winter day.
Not everyone has a 1000 m mountain in their backyard. If the nearest hill is 100 m above the plains, it would require a basin capacity, up in the hills as well as down on the plains, of 200 cubic meters per day, or 6000 cubic meters a month, 24,000 cubic meters to serve a single home for a 4-month winter season. Lots of pumped-water-storage never made that simple calculation!
A final proposal for energy storage: Cut a cylindrical shell of rock, five meters across, one meter thick walls. Fasten permanent magnets tangentially on the surface, all the way around. In a shell around the cylinder, mount electromagnetic coils to pull on those permanent magnets, to spin up the stone cylinder. Note that at the exact moment when the magnet is passing under the coil, you have to reverse the polarity of the coil to push the magnet (and stone cylinder) further along. When you want the power back, you let those spinning magnet induce a current in the the coils; this will gradually brake down the spinning cylinder.
Given a 5 m across, 1 m thick cylinder shell of density 2.5 stone, spinning it up 20 rps, would store slightly below 300 kWh per meter of cylinder length. I guess you would need a few extra magnets in the bearings to lift it up - the weight would be 31.5 tons per meter of cylinder length. Make sure to point it to the Northern Star, unless you want it to dance around like a spinning top.
Note that making a solid cylinder rather than a cylindrical shell would indeed increase its energy storing capacity by almost 12%, and its weight by 60%; the weight/capacity ratio goes up by around 40%. (If a capacity of 200 kWh per meter is sufficient for you: Shave down the walls to 0.5 m thickness, and the weight drops to 17.7 tons/m.)
This is just a crazy idea. In my eyes, it is no less realistic than using batteries or pumped water for storing huge amounts of energy that can be extracted as electricity.
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trønderen wrote: This is for saving half of Canada's installed capacity from spring/summer for use the coming winter
That just seems like the wrong problem to try to solve.
But clearly, you've given this a lot more thought than I ever have.
And I appreciate that - not trying to be sarcastic.
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I certainly didn't intend to claim the (re)invention of the flywheel! 
Like with batteries, I just wanted to illustrate a few back-of-envelope calculations to indicate the magnitudes. The Wikipedia article essentially points out the traditional uses, such as frequency control, brakes, power fluctuations (in production or consumption) - essentially, "smoothing" functions.
Medium/long term energy storage is only mentioned as a half theoretical possibility. One of the referenced sources is a 2016 story about a system with planned completion four years later. If you look up the web site of the company, they offer units that can store 32 kWh each. In their list of 10 installations, a single one exceeds 64 kWh capacity. The Fresno project referred to by Wikipedia is not mentioned at all - apparently, it was never realized.
When discussing flywheel energy storage with people, try to throw in a side remark or small question about how the gyro effects are handled. If the give you a blank stare in return, or try to brush off the question as something insignificant, then you know that they are not serious about energy storage.
You could possibly use a flywheel (or fly-cylinder) for medium-term (6 hours) storage of energy from a tidal power station. For long-term high capacity energy storage, such as needed in a wind power station to cope with a week of calm: Forget it.
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trønderen wrote: Tidal power is a kind and well behaved energy source
I believe geo-thermal as well.
Although there are probably long term problems with that solution.
Maybe we can just all shiver through the winter months until the sun comes back out?
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jschell wrote: I believe geo-thermal as well.
For the stability and predictability, you are no doubt correct.
If what you need is electricity, in most parts of the world you have to drill really deep down, to where the temperatures are above the boiling point of water. If the steam comes to surface level, most people want to move to a different location (Reykjavik is an exception ). You will do that excessive drilling investment only of you plan a power plant of significant size, based on steam turbines.
If what you need is medium temperature heat, e.g. for heating homes, you can often make due with a lot cheaper drilling. The surface installation is a triviality, compared to steam turbines for an electric power plant.
Consider energy wells for heat pumps to be the little brother of geo-thermal energy. You will still need electricity from another source to run the heat pump, but you can get 3-5 times as much heat from each kWh, compared to direct electric heating. And it is stable and reliable. As reliable as your electricity supply for your heat pump.
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trønderen wrote: If what you need is medium temperature heat, e.g. for heating homes, you can often make due with a lot cheaper drilling.
Of course micro scale geo thermal, accounting just for the local install, is not going to be as efficient as macro installs based on the the TCO in terms of environmental cost.
I haven't seen anything that seeks to clarify long term costs (environmental) of those.
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Thanks for the time you invested in this post.
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I got a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVMe to replace the smaller lesser performing 1TB NVMe that ships with my new laptop (arriving tomorrow)
The laptop comes with Win11 home, which is fine for my purposes, since I intend to dual boot and home is just for gaming at my sister's. Work is linux.
The laptop has a 2nd NVMe slot, so my plan is to populate it with the 1 TB drive that ships with the PC, pop the 2TB in the primary, and then format/repartition the secondary into 2 500GB partitions, one of which will be linux, and the other half will be for downloads and pictures and stuff. The primary drive is for win11 and any games I want to play.
Here's the issue: The Windows license. I essentially want to transfer my license and Windows 11 copy from my 1TB to my 2TB.
Here's how a little bird told me I could do it:
Log onto my microsoft account to associate my Windows license with my account.
Swap out the system drive, install win 11, choosing "I don't have a product key" - then, if it doesn't activate by UEFI I should be able to sign in to my MS account and activate it that way or something? Wasn't real clear on that last bit.
This is supposed to be a new feature with Win11.
Does anyone know anything about this, or otherwise know how I can accomplish the above?
There's smoke in my iris
But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids
So I'm ready now (What you ready for?)
I'm ready for life in this city
And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
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honey the codewitch wrote: Swap out the system drive, install win 11, choosing "I don't have a product key" - then, if it doesn't activate by UEFI I should be able to sign in to my MS account and activate it that way or something? Wasn't real clear on that last bit.
This has been like this since Win8 IIRC.
I used to do a lot of swaps and reinstalls during my college years.
If it's not an OEM license (some manufacturers ship with OEM license to save on costs), you'll be able to install without the product key and then login to your MS account.
It should automatically verify the installation.
Alternatively you could run the following command in the command prompt as admin to get the product key and keep it somewhere for reference.
wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey
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Thank you! Yeah, I'm not sure what the story with this license is. It's whatever Lenovos ship with.
There's smoke in my iris
But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids
So I'm ready now (What you ready for?)
I'm ready for life in this city
And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
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I got curious and tried to write:
slmgr /dli in cmd, which apparently lets you know if you have OEM, Retail, or Volume license.
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awesome, thanks!
There's smoke in my iris
But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids
So I'm ready now (What you ready for?)
I'm ready for life in this city
And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
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I'd grab AOMEI Backupper (there is a free version) and hit the "Clone" button. Then select "System Clone - Clone or migrate your system to SSD or other disk." and follow the instructions it will give.
It's been a while since I did that, but last time (Win 10) it was extremely pain free. Changing your disk does not invalidate your registration, it should work right away.
Then I'd use their Partition Assistant (again a free version is available) to faff with the disk sizes.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Thanks. I'll maybe try that first.
There's smoke in my iris
But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids
So I'm ready now (What you ready for?)
I'm ready for life in this city
And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
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OriginalGriff wrote: Changing your disk does not invalidate your registration, it should work right away.
That is correct, I didn't know that. Thanks.
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The only time I got in trouble was when I had to exchange the motherboard as well. Then I had to call Microsoft in order to get a valid license. Cant remember what type of license that was tough.
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I would go with a restore image from the manufacturer... In there DB your computer must be registered and identified...
"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." ― Gerald Weinberg
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I found the following VBScript code (ARRGH!) for getting a product key. It seems to work, YMMV. It may help as a double check for some of the other ideas given in previous responses. My PC arrived with W10 and I immediately upgraded (?) to W11 as that had come out whilst the PC was in the post and it meant that I had nothing of my own on the PC to lose. I was fortunate as it was an in situ upgrade and it picked up the old key automatically, so didn't need the output from this code.
To use, save as <name>.vbs and just double click it.
Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
MsgBox ConvertToKey(WshShell.RegRead("HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\DigitalProductId"))
Function ConvertToKey(Key)
Const KeyOffset = 52
i = 28
Chars = "BCDFGHJKMPQRTVWXY2346789"
Do
Cur = 0
x = 14
Do
Cur = Cur * 256
Cur = Key(x + KeyOffset) + Cur
Key(x + KeyOffset) = (Cur \ 24) And 255
Cur = Cur Mod 24
x = x -1
Loop While x >= 0
i = i -1
KeyOutput = Mid(Chars, Cur + 1, 1) & KeyOutput
If (((29 - i) Mod 6) = 0) And (i <> -1) Then
i = i -1
KeyOutput = "-" & KeyOutput
End If
Loop While i >= 0
ConvertToKey = KeyOutput
End Function
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Thanks. I use a tool to pull it out of the registry, but that works too. Nice to just use WSH. Hopefully though, the product key is on the case itself. It usually has been when I've received desktops.
Edit: The last time I tried to install Win10 I had the product key (from the case of the machine) and it would not let me use it. I had to call support. They told me to choose "I don't have a product key" and that worked. It pulled it from UEFI.
There's smoke in my iris
But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids
So I'm ready now (What you ready for?)
I'm ready for life in this city
And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
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That script brings back nightmares. Makes me realize how easy hackers could spin up COM objects to do anything via a malicious website.
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When the manufacturer installs a new legal version of Windows, the machine gets registered with Microsoft. (The machine - not the drive!) It does not matter how you change the drive, or how many times your do a clean install, or how many times you do a re-image of the systems drive, as long as you install the same version of Windows (11 home edition) the installation will be activated as soon as the machine connects to the Internet for the first time.
I don't bother with cloning. I get rid of the bloated junk that ships with the machine by doing a clean install. Windows will be activated immediately. At least this has always worked on my Dell computers.
Ok, I have had my coffee, so you can all come out now!
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Thank you for this!
There's smoke in my iris
But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids
So I'm ready now (What you ready for?)
I'm ready for life in this city
And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
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If you do a clean install on a NVMe drive: Be very aware of this issue. You may want to download the Intel Rapid Storage Drivers before you start:
The Lounge[^]
Ok, I have had my coffee, so you can all come out now!
modified 24-May-23 8:42am.
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