RES-chains training material:

The aim was to identify sustainable renewable energy source chains (RES-Chains) to encourage sustainable development within the South Baltic Region. The training material aimed to describe the connections between renewable energy sources and customers.

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Start over

Your choices:
1 Wind;   2 Process heat;   3 Electricity

What is your resource? What do you want to deliver? What is the service the customer wants?
Biomass (digestible sludge) District cooling Comfortable indoor climate
Biomass (fermentable sludge) District heating Electricity
Biomass (solid) 3 Electricity 2 Process cooling (< 0 °C)
Geothermal Fuel: Gaseous 2 Process heat/steam (50 - 150 °C)
Sunshine Fuel: Liquid 2 Process heat (150 - 1000 °C)
Water Fuel: Solid 2 Process heat (> 1000 °C)
1 Wind Local cooling (ind. house) Transport
Residual oils/fats etc Local heating (ind. house)

 

By aid of electricity – the king of the energy carriers – any temperature ranging from cryogenic up to more than 3000 °C can be produced. Electrical processes are also simple to control and they are "clean" – as long as one does not take into account the emissions caused during the production of the electricity itself.

Hence; many industrial processes and customers prefer to buy electricity for their processes, though this may, from a thermodynamical point of view, not be the optimal choice.

For electricity to be the best choice, the production must have been clean and it must exhibit the highest possible efficiency. Though wind power production of electricity suffers from the fundamental limitation that it may extract no more than 60% of the latent energy in the blowing wind, it is still the second best option and there is good reason that it is currently expanding at the rate it is.