Ed Miliband has signed off 3 new solar farms expected to produce c. 1.4GW
FWIW if you are trying to rustle up quick energy, is my feeling that solar is the best way justified ? Especially as you can start pulling power as soon as the first panel is laid.
We just need to solve the storage issue. What's the problem with gravity batteries ?
Waste of money at these latitudes. And you get nothing at night, nothing for most of the day in winter, and even less if it's overcast in winter. As usual for all these scenarios you need a backup plan, so as usual you are building two power stations to get the output of one.
I haven't done the sums (have you?) but I would guess that you need a large shitload of stuff moved up and down to get any reasonable amount of energy storage. Oh wait, isn't that what Dinorwig is? and that provides 2GW for about
8 hours, IIRC. Enough to do a bit of balancing and also for a black start of the grid, but not much else.As usual Milibean and, it seems, yourself, are imagining that handwaving willsolve the problem. The usual magical thinking that I would normally associate with the LibDems, or, more so, with teh Greens.
This is just belling the cat.
At Dinorwig, it looks like the vertical gain is around 1800 ft. At how many places in the UK can you do that? Not many. And you need space for a large reservoir at the top, and another at the bottom. And to be able to do it all in such a way that no nimbies jump in.
This is why Dinorwig is essentially unique in this country. I think the Yanks have tried running heavy trains up and downhill as a way of storing but I've not heard how much energy storage that provides.
There is also the Cruachan scheme in Scotland with others on the way.
Too heavy. ;-)
I assume you mean storing energy as PE by raising a mass? I’m pretty sure the sums have been done and it’s not a cheap way of storing power compared to batteries.
Tim
The problem with solar is that you would need to store the energy generated in the summer months through to winter when it's needed most.
Which is why there are plans for more pumped storage schemes. There aren't big enough batteries.
If it's cheap enough, you can waste some of it.
More to the point, we have a spread of renewable sources, and some produce more power in winter.
and about 3GW of total generating capacity - but only for a a few hours at that output.
(At full chat you can only get about 6 hours out of Dinorwig, and about ~20 hours out of the others (but only about 1.2GW combined out of the others Vs 1.7GW from Dinorwig)
Pumped hydro is better suited to shifting nuclear generation from night time to day, so that the power plants can be run at maximum efficiency 24/7.
In message snipped-for-privacy@candehope.me.uk>, charles snipped-for-privacy@candehope.me.uk> writes
It's Scotland's Gravity.
Brian
Yup 1.4GW of extra gas generation now designed into the grid, along with further instability and less ability to stabilise grid frequency.
No energy generation when it is most required (dark evenings in the winter)
Probably easier to sort fusion instead :-)
Nothing for small scale storage, difficult for medium, and probably impossible for much more.
Try the sums and see what you get.
And how much water needs to be stored?
I saw this on UKClimbing.com yesterday
The green lobby will promote solar as being cheap but will not include in the cost all of this expensive (pumped) storage required to make it viable as a reliable source*. It's much the same as wind where the cost of extending the grid is ignored and the amount of labour required to regularly service perhaps 50,000 wind turbines spread around the country. Just check the mean time between failures for wind turbines.
*The UK hasn't enough suitable sites for the number of pumped storage needed. I suppose that something heavier than water could be used, as has already been proposed, but the environmentalists would soon object when they find out this substance is actually the same as "fracking mud" :)
Hahahashahahahahha
F****ng cat belling moron
That's why Cruachan was built - to compliment Hunterston
From Wikipedia: Gravity battery
"Types of gravity batteries
Large scale
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH) is the most widely used and highest-capacity form of grid-energy storage. In PSH, water is pumped from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir, which can then be released through turbines to produce energy. An alternative PSH proposal uses a proprietary high-density liquid, 2+1/2 times denser than water, which requires a smaller head (elevation) and thus decreases the size and cost of the necessary infrastructure.
Energy-storage-by-rail is a concept where excess renewable energy is used to run heavy train cars uphill during times of low energy demand. The potential energy is released later by using regenerative braking as they roll downhill, acting as a gravity battery.[25] A utility-scale (50 MW) facility called GravityLine began construction in October 2020 by Advanced Rail Energy Storage, located at the Gamebird Pit gravel mine in the Pahrump Valley, Nevada, and is planned to deliver up to 15 minutes of service at full capacity.
Lift Renewable Energy uses a form of gravity battery. To store energy, buoyant gas containers are pulled down into water by a winch, water is in effect lifted hundreds of meters. The cycle is then reversed and electricity is generated as the gas containers rise. Relatively little infrastructure is required, the batteries can be sited near major population centers, round trip efficiency is 85+%, and the system can be built at a GWh scale.[citation needed]
Lifted Weight Storage (LWS) technology uses surplus energy to mechanically lift solid weights vertically, typically on a pulley system. When extra energy is needed, the mass is lowered, and the pulley turns a generator.[27] Energy Vault 60 meter prototype in Arbedo-Castione, Switzerland, in
2021EnergyVault is designing a LWS system using a tower built from 32-ton concrete blocks, stacked with 120-meter cranes. One commercial unit is expected to store 20 MWh of energy, or enough to power 2,000 Swiss homes a day.
Gravitricity's LWS system in an underground shaft uses an electric winch to lift a 500-to-5000-tonne weight, which when lowered turns the winch motor as a generator. The system generates 10 MWh, enough to power 13,000 homes for two hours. The weight can also be dropped quickly for a small burst of power."
The problem with all of these is that they only store relatively small amounts of energy and for short periods. As others have said, Dinorwig is the largest energy storage system in the UK, yet it can only produce ~1.8 MW for 6 hours.
Dinorwig, North Wales, capacity 1.73 MW, Cruachan, Argyll Scotland, capacity 0.44 MW Festiniog, North Wales, capacity 0.36 MW Foyers, Inverness Scotland, capacity 0.3 MW Sloy, Argyll, Scotland, 0.16 MW.
They also require long transmission lines to get the power to the centres of demand such as big cities.
But they are miniscule compared to a single nuclear power station and they only run for a few hours until the upper reservoir runs dry, while for example Hinkley Point C will produce 3,260 MW continuously, allowing for downtime due to servicing etc. And yet those five are the best we have! Mere minnows!
Pumped storage might just find a place in peak-lopping, due to it's rapid run up to peak output (Dinorwig is 75 seconds!), but will never be an appropriate medium for electricity storage to run the whole country continuously for several days in winter WTWDBATSDS. Energy storage on that scale is a foolish pipe dream.
There aren't big enough pumped storage locations either
It is f****ng expensive
Not really
Thermal energy storage?
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