UK grid operator streamlines 10 GW of battery storage

[Adokforme]

How much storage is required is difficult because there are too many variables particularly how will the population respond to demand shift and V2G just as one eg. The other big variable is that it pays financially to overbuild the RE production capacity but by how much and what cost and who will pay.

I think Tony Seba points the way regarding overbuild/capacity in the vid above. While the matter of cost is surely zero to government as it is mostly covered via the many CFD schemes so I believe to be virtually self financing?
Presumably the main cost will be building out the Grid to cope with increasing demand but if there is little or no requirement for building further traditional power stations then perhaps the money planned for these could be diverted to where it would be more usefully deployed.

[Mart]

Interesting numbers Mart, thanks for setting out the variables as an indication of complexity, in general terms though it really does under pin what I think many of us instinctively know. Nuclear power is not cheap, far from it, for example its not clear from the costs quoted, on various sites, for Hinkley what inclusions are made for fuel reprocessing and disposal, presumably being a French state owned company the fuel reprocessing, and long term storage and disposal will all be at Le Hague? It would be interesting to know the fraction for this service as a component of the the cost per MWh.

So if nuclear power is expensive I wonder how few of them we really need to be able to scrape through when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine and the cheaper battery storage is exhausted.

Would three stations and circa 10GW do it ?

Moxi

Sorry it turned into a giant waffle, but every sentence I typed resulted in two more problems / caveats popping up, like a giant game of whack-a-mole, with ever more moles.

I'm going to stick my neck out, and suggest no nuclear is needed, but this does require two massive points of contention.

First, I have no issues with 10-20GW of battery storage, as it's really not as much as it may at first sound, especially with all of the additional income streams available, such as firm frequency response, peaker services. And if co-located or co-invested with RE, it also helps to firm up a minimum price for RE, when generation is good, by adding a large market. It should also trim down peak prices, so be a good investment for leccy customers too.

But, whilst I talk about longer term storage, I'm aware that we need to see it on a larger and more economical scale, before we can rely on it as a 1 to 20 day(?) alternative to nuclear. Apparently the UK has around 2,000TWh+ of viable storage for CAES/H2, but whether or not we can make 20TWh* output economical, I don't know. But both forms of storage are rolling out, around the world, albeit on small scale. Also important is if the CAES can be 50-60% efficient, which would be excellent. H2 via a gas generator or fuel cell can be 60% efficient, but I'm not sure what the overall efficiency would be when including electrolysis, compression etc.

*20TWh is not an official figure, just my thoughts based on 3TWh per day for a week in the winter. We currently use a little less than 1TWh per day on average, but demand long term could double, and there will be a winter bias/weighting due to heating. Eventually we may need ~50TWh?


Second point, is the continued use of FF gas, which may shock surprise many. But, for 2030 (before leccy demand has grown significantly) we are looking at potentially 20GW of interconnectors, 20GW of storage, and have about 20GW of gas CCGT's. That would get us through RE shortfalls, and even 4hrs of storage might be adequate at that point, to cover the roughly 4hr peak demand period.

I know it sounds weird, but if using gas as a fallback, in very large amounts (power), but for short periods (energy), to get us to a net zero future, faster and cheaper than deploying new nuclear, it may be better. The annual amount of gas generation would keep falling, and hopefully be 10% and falling by 2030. Bear in mind that no new nuclear, other than HPC, will come on line till 2035+, so directing the nuclear investment into RE and storage, may be cheaper, and displace the FF gas element faster. [My thoughts, not verifiable facts, whatsoever, yet.]

I'd suggest that SZC, if approved today, and on-line by 2035, won't really displace FF's, but would instead, by then, be going head to head with RE and storage, so it's an economic argument, not AGW issue, I think? If I'm right, then lifting the AGW concern, makes it much easier for us to focus on nuclear costs, decommissioning, storage etc.


Damn, this was supposed to be short too!

[Moxi]

Again it makes perfect sense to me as I read it and yes there are alternates to the nuclear option, I was just trying to tease out how big a gap we need bridge between windy days, as a long term hydro supporter I would say some tidal rather than new nuclear would be better, but that's based on my thoughts only and I appreciate there will be other views.

I suppose for wind and solar to become the main dependant generation sources we need the longest downturn in meteorological terms plus a margin of safety to determine the storage requirement.

Moxi

[Ken]

Remembering that we are aiming for NET zero CO2 by 2050 then i think it essential that we use gas for the few days a yr when the wind, other RE and storage is not adequate. The cost of getting the last bit of FF off the grid is colossal against a few days of gas. The risk averse politics would never allow us to stop gas completely without something concrete ie nuclear , however the present nuclear will all be gone by the time the new nuclear comes on line.

For a better understanding suggest (not for skim reading)
http://euanmearns.com/uk-electricity-pa ... and-solar/

[Mart]

Again it makes perfect sense to me as I read it and yes there are alternates to the nuclear option, I was just trying to tease out how big a gap we need bridge between windy days, as a long term hydro supporter I would say some tidal rather than new nuclear would be better, but that's based on my thoughts only and I appreciate there will be other views.

I suppose for wind and solar to become the main dependant generation sources we need the longest downturn in meteorological terms plus a margin of safety to determine the storage requirement.

Moxi

Hiya. Hope I've got this right, but may be misleading you a bit, but I think I've seen figures for long term storage ranging from 20TWh to 56TWh. That 56 figure is quite specific, but with my long covid brain fog, I may have made it up. But ...... assuming my guess of about 3TWh* of demand per day, in the winter, for an almost all leccy future is right, then that suggests about 3 weeks of storage. Can't remember if the lower 20(ish) figure is for the 2030's, when leccy demand is lower, or is a lower figure for the high leccy future, 2050(ish).

Of course, nothing is that simple, wind won't be zero, even if it's low, PV will be relatively reliable over a 3 week period, but of course very low in the winter, when this worst case scenario will happen. Hydro is very small (in the UK), but reliable, as will be bio-energy, and larger amounts of bio-mass, if we stick with it, but we may drop it (I don't know).

Then comes the really big factors, will we be able to rely on imports, or will mainland Europe be struggling at the same time? And having ~60TWh of stored energy (net) is fine, but what will the power output be, 3TWh/day is an average of 125GW?

I'm a huge fan of tidal energy, and tidal lagoons, or at least their idea. If they can generate at costs similar to nuclear, then I'd hope that would be an immediate acceptable alternative (on a daily output equivalent, as intraday storage could balance out peaks and troughs), as it would avoid the long term storage problems/concerns?

Another massive question, for me, is the proposed idea of piping in leccy from Morocco (or similar). The suggested cost is lower than nuclear, but using reliable PV, onshore wind and storage, it would have the same reliability. I don't know if the costs are genuine, but if they are, then that might be a huge gamechanger.

Man, this is complicated, and a constant moving target too. I don't know about you, but I suspect I now know less than when I started.


*I'm simply scaling up from less than 1TWh/day (on average) to over 2TWh/day in 2050(ish), then weighting it 3:1 winter v's summer. So you can see how 'loose' my guesses are.

[Ken]

Then comes the really big factors, will we be able to rely on imports, or will mainland Europe be struggling at the same time? And having ~60TWh of stored energy (net) is fine, but what will the power output be, 3TWh/day is an average of 125GW?

Interestingly that article i quoted allows for 121GW AVERAGE in a winter cold spell.

So in a 10 day winter high pressure ie no wind or solar we would require 10days x 24hr x 125GW = 30,000GWh . Storage would not even scratch the surface of that.

[Mart]

Then comes the really big factors, will we be able to rely on imports, or will mainland Europe be struggling at the same time? And having ~60TWh of stored energy (net) is fine, but what will the power output be, 3TWh/day is an average of 125GW?

Interestingly that article i quoted allows for 121GW AVERAGE in a winter cold spell.

So in a 10 day winter high pressure ie no wind or solar we would require 10days x 24hr x 125GW = 30,000GWh . Storage would not even scratch the surface of that.

I'm only spitballing, but what if the 56TWh of storage was spread over 100 CAES sites, each with 1.25GW output, eg on average 1.25GW/560GWh, that would scratch it pretty well.

I assume reality would sit somewhere between though, with less power capacity, providing the energy over a longer time period (perhaps 20 days), as our generation and imports wouldn't really be zero.

Hopefully all of this is possible, and we can develop and deploy it steadily as the need grows over the next 25yrs+. After all, we do it today, with stockpiles of oil, petrol, diesel, gas and coal, plus daily imports. So the problem remains the same, just the type of storage changes. Plus, due to efficiencies (BEV's, HP's etc) our actual energy consumption will go down, even if leccy demand goes up. But I'm not trying to belittle the problem/task either.