The Horse 2019/20

W7: 3/25 Wednesday * 2020

Special - Distance learning experiment II

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>Don't forget to check out the following website for your energy carrier: https://dontwastemy.energy/
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Wind turbine

Produced energy from wind is renewable. The main part of producing energy out of wind is the wind turbine. In Swiss we got over 57 of them. But how do they produce energy out of wind? It’s simple. The turbines have three rotor blades which rotate when there is enough wind blow. By rotating, they start an engine which produces energy and uploads the energy into the power line. It is important for the wind farm to be able to store electricity so that it can also be used when the wind turbines are at a standstill - for example during maintenance work or difficult weather conditions in alpine winter. For space reasons, it will likely result in battery storage - six stores the size of shipping containers. Each storage facility must be able to store the daily production of electricity from a wind turbine.[Wind turbine, 2010] [How to save wind energy, 2017]

Picture: Wind turbine

Another type of mechanism with windpower is the windmill. In the middle age the farmer used the windmill to produce flour out of wheat.

Picture: Windmill

Wind turbine in Switzerland:

In Switzerland there are not so mandy windturbine, thats because siwtzerland is not a typical country for them. But in the canton of jura and in some mountains there are windtrubine. Switzerland has not so much space for those big windturbine,but in this case there are some ‘parks’ weher it has some windtubine that are enough. They are mostly build in industriezone.  [WWF_Wind energy_2017]

Change of Windturbine over Decades:

Between 1978 and 2010, the wind speed declined by an approximate 0.3 kilometers per hour per decade. From 2010 to 2017, however, the wind speed rose by 0.9 kilometers per hour. According to the survey, the electricity that could be selected from a conventional system using the wind has increased by a circular 17% since 2010. In addition, the increase was 22% in North America and Europe, and within 11% in Asia. So from year to year there are not more windturbine in switzerland, only when they find some free space they can build some even if the wind speed increases. [The expansion of wind energy in Switzerland_2017]

Here you find an interesting Video regarding the building of wind turbines.

[Building a wind turbine_2018]

Question: Wherecan you find the windmill?

Group: Silvan Vlaj, Luana Di Benedetto

Solar thermal energy is the utilization of energy obtained from shortwave solar irradiance, transferred to a heat carrier medium. It also offers large-scale possibilities, such as high-temperature hot water for steam production and power generation. Interesting applications for urban energy planning include installations at building level or a possible connection with district heating networks.

More...

What is Tidal Energy?

Tidal Energy is a renewable energy source. It is produced with the ocean waters surge in and out with tides. For most tidal energy generators, turbines are placed in tidal streams. A tidal stream is a fast-flowing body of water created by tides. A turbine is a machine that takes energy from a flow of fluid. The tidal energy is much more powerful than wind energy, because of their different density. Unlike wind, tides are predictable and stable. 

knowledge deepening
I haven't found much informations for the real use of tidal energy, thats because it is not very much used. In switzerland you can't find tidal energy systems because we don't have a sea and its tides. The next tidal power station is found in france on the estuary of the rance river. Tidal energy has grown worldwide in the last few years because of companies, which invested in tidal energy projects. Researchers see tremendous potential and predict a major growth in the next decade. The tidal market is expected to grow around 10% in the period from 2017-2024. Because it is invented in 2007, there are not much new technical improvements or development. There are just a few obstacles for that energy source. A big problem is the price, you need to have very much capital to build a tidal energy system. Another obstacle is also the dependence on mother nature, you need a suitable site where tidal streams are consistently strong.

Examples:

1. In the United States, there are legal concerns about underwater land ownership and environmental impact. Investors are not enthusiastic about tidal energy because there is not a strong guarantee that it will make money or benefit consumers.

2. There are currently three different ways to get tidal energy: tidal streams,barrages and tidal lagoons. 

Quiz Question:

Where was the first tidal energy system constructed?

A - 2010 in America

B - 2005 in Germany

C - 2007 in Ireland

Vocabulary:

surge - sudden, strong movement forward
Tides - water level that has risen as a result of the moon's gravitational pull on the Earth.
density - how big is something, how many molecules does it have

source: Tidal energy, 2015 - (National Geographic.org)
            The development of Tidal Energy, 2019 (lagersmit.com)

By Devin and Marco

Hydropower is power which is gained from the energy of falling or fast-running water, which may be harnessed for useful purposes. Hydropower has been used as a renewable energy source since ancient times. It was used for the irrigation and operation of various mechanical devices, such as gristmills, sawmills, textile mills, trip hammers, dock cranes and domestic lifts. 

More...

What is Nuclear Energy?

Nuclear energy is a hot topic in today’s world. Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind haven’t yet proven themselves as viable solutions to meet the population’s wide-scale energy needs. With constantly growing energy demands, it’s imperative we explore nuclear as a dependable energy source. The process used to produce nuclear energy is called fission. Nuclear fission occurs when the atom of a nucleus is split, releasing very large amounts of energy. In nuclear power plants, atoms are continuously split, creating chain reactions that provide high amounts of sustainable energy for a long period of time. Nuclear Energy is not renewable.

Some Pros about Nuclear Energy: Low Greenhouse Gas Emissions, High Power Output, Inexpensive Electricity

Some Cons about Nuclear Energy: Past History of Nuclear Accidents, Target for Terrorism, Not a Renewable Fuel Source

Source: Kernenergie

Situation in Switzerland

In Switzerland there are 3 nuclear power plants. In the last few years the nuclear power plants lost their popularity, if you can say that like that. The danger and the waste produce of them is just too high. In 2017 the Swiss Voters accepted the energy strategy 2050. This means the nuclear power plants will shut down until 2050 and there will be no new ones built.

Impact on humans and the environement

If nuclear power is not handled correctly and there is a mistake, it can directly kill cells, or it can cause mutations to DNA. If those mutations are not repaired, the cell may turn cancerous. However Nuclear energy has perhaps the lowest impact on the environment. Including air, land, water, and wildlife of any energy source. It produces no harmful greenhouse gases, isolates its waste from the environment, and requires less area to produce the same amount of electricity as other sources.

How Long does it last

At the current rate of uranium consumption with conventional reactors, the world supply of viable uranium, which is the most common nuclear fuel, will last for 80 years.

Uranium mining

2 Examples

Efficiency of Nuclear Energy

Nuclear energy has by far the highest capacity of any other energy source. This basically means nuclear power plants are producing maximum power more than 92% of the time during the year. That's about 1.5 to 2 times more as natural gas and coal units, and 2.5 to 3.5 times more reliable than wind and solar plants.

Usage of Nuclear Energy

Nuclear Energy is mostly used to produce electricity for our households.

Quiz Question:

Ho much of the worlds electricity is produced by Nuclear Energy?

A) 20%       B) 14%      C) 49%

Source: Nuclear Power Facts

Vocabulary:

Renewable -> Erneuerbar

Fission -> Kernspaltung

Target -> Ziel

Nina & Elena

Energy carrier wind

Wind power is a sustainable and renewable Energy, and has a much smaller Impact on the Environment compared to Burning fossil

Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements; chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dead plant matter decays into peat and is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. As a fossil fuel burned for heat, coal supplies about a quarter of the world's primary energy and two-fifths of its electricity. Some iron and stell making and other industrial processes burn coal.

Advantages:
Workplaces
Cost effective resource

Disadvantages
Potancial damage to the environment 

Question?

How long does coal exist?

Sources:

Kohle Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft

Advantages and disadvantages

How energy works

Vocabulary:

combustible - brennbar

strata- Schichten

Deepening of Coal
Coal, which has been a primary energy source for more than a century, began to form during the Carboniferous period, which took place between 360 and 290 million years ago. Plant matter accumulated in swamps and peat bogs, and after being buried and exposed to high heat and pressure — largely due to the shifting of tectonic plates — it was transformed into the coal that powered the industrial revolution and that the mining industry uses today. 

Coal is the energy carrier with the biggest total resource. The advantage of coal is that coal is available over the world. Coal is problematic because it has an incredible CO2 emissions. In Switzerland was coal to the middle of the 20 century the main carrier and was used mostly for primarly energy as fuel. The most important coversion in the second energie was with coal gasifaction for the city energy. The role of coal in switzerland is so inncuous that in 1998 the coal carrier was canceled.The return of coal as a energy carrier in Switzerland is not really believable. 

Lignite is the youngest type of coal. It is soft and ranges in color from black to shades of brown. As a result, it’s sometimes called brown coal. Lignite is mainly used for electricity generation and accounts for 17 percent of the world’s coal reserves.

Advantages of Lignite coal:

Team: Dominic/Giorgio

Biogas and natural gas

The 2 most important gases used as an energy carrier is the natural gas (Erdgas) and the biogas. It is important to mention that there exist a lot of other different types of gases but since these are the most common ones we will explain those. The biggest difference between natural gas (Erdgas) and biogas is that the biogas is renewable and the natural gas is not.More...

Oil as an energy source

Oil is a fossil energy carrier and it's non-renewable. In general, oil is a liquid that is made up of organic molecules. However, the world oil in the context of the energy sector is the liquid fossil fuel that is extracted from the ground. Roughly 1/3 of the world's primary energy comes from this primary fuel. One barrell of oil equals approximately 159 liters.

With these pumps the workers gain the oil from the underground. More...

Geothermal energy is the heat coming from the earth and is located under the surface of it. The heat is more extrem the further you go into the earth. Several Miles into the earth you can find the magma rocks, which are extremly hot. However you can already find some heat from shallow ground. More...