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UK grid operator streamlines 10 GW of battery storage

Plans to connect around 10 GW of battery energy storage projects in England and Wales are now in the fast lane. This comes on top of 10 GW of capacity unlocked at distribution level, including shovel-ready solar farms, onshore wind, and battery storage projects.

Got to be good news for renewables energy and storage contribution to the Grid, especially after the tales of woe suggesting decades long queues in the recent past.

Adokforme wrote: ↑Tue Nov 07, 2023 6:07 pm

UK grid operator streamlines 10 GW of battery storage

Plans to connect around 10 GW of battery energy storage projects in England and Wales are now in the fast lane. This comes on top of 10 GW of capacity unlocked at distribution level, including shovel-ready solar farms, onshore wind, and battery storage projects.

Got to be good news for renewables energy and storage contribution to the Grid, especially after the tales of woe suggesting decades long queues in the recent past.

I think someone must have sensed political fall-out and put a bomb under (or up) their rear ends! Mind you, there's no sign of any outcome from the grid's (re-run) consultation about charges (in both directions) for big storage so I guess nothing will happen on this in the near future. 2 or 3 (or more) quite big Scottish and smaller Welsh schemes in limbo/mothballed because of the financial aspects.
I think it stinks.
A

I wonder how much that 10GW has cost?, I would love to see one or two of the tabloids do a cost and time comparison with the likes of Hinckley C

Moxi

Moxi wrote: ↑Tue Nov 07, 2023 6:22 pm I wonder how much that 10GW has cost?, I would love to see one or two of the tabloids do a cost and time comparison with the likes of Hinckley C

Moxi

How about the Daily Mail and the Telegraph for some unbiased reporting...

The day they manage that I will frame a copy for posterity. Joking aside we really do need an accessible paper to champion alternate power to help educate people.

I do what I can to inform people around me and more so to try to practice what I preach.

Moxi

Moxi wrote: ↑Tue Nov 07, 2023 6:22 pm I wonder how much that 10GW has cost?, I would love to see one or two of the tabloids do a cost and time comparison with the likes of Hinckley C

Moxi

I'm totally making this up, just from info available. So this is just a 'fun' comparison, not to be taken too seriously.

But, the latest estimate for the cost of construction for HPC is over £30bn, and at 3.2GW, you'd need 3 (and a bit) to output 10GW, so call it £100bn? Each taking 10-15yrs to build, after approval.

Looking at Tesla's Megapack pricing (in the US, as the UK site is 'contact us' only), for a 3.9MWh unit they cost roughly $2m - $2.1m for the 2hr 2MW output, and $1.9m for the 4hr 1MW spec. Let's go with the 4hr unit, to push costs up (twice as many packs), and also increase the grid support time.

So $2m per MW, is $2bn per GW, or $20bn for 10GW.

In reality, for 1,000 units the site gives a price of $1.3m* each, and output of 979MW / 3,916MWh. So for 10GW, we can multiply that by 10.21 = $13.3bn. So roughly £10bn, but those are prices for California, so expact a higher price for UK shipping/install.

*This includes installation, without it, they are $1.145m each (for 1,000, or $1.27m for just 1).

Time wise, Tesla's Lathrop facility is scaling to 40GWh, perhaps by the end of 2024, but they are also building another facility in China, and more/larger planned. So, 10GW/40GWh would be a whole years production for a single facility, once ramped up.

Obviously, the nukes could output for more than 4hrs, if there are no problems, then for roughly 22 months before a 2 month refueling. Horses for courses.

I believe a figure of about 20GW has been suggested for storage to allow the UK to approach net zero in the longer term, with higher leccy demand. But I think this includes longer term storage, such as H2 and CAES (compressed air energy storage), which may involve storage of 20TWh+ by utilising old gas wells, saline aquifers etc etc.. The battery storage side is (I believe) the intraday storage, helping to balance peaks and troughs in both daily demand and RE supply.

Tesla Megapack

Just realised that my post is comparing storage to generation, so probably worth looking at RE v's nuclear generation costs, as the storage cost example, is really about allowing us to generate from cheaper intermittent RE, v's reliable (typically) nuclear.

So, the latest cost comparison we have is HPC with a 35yr CfD of £89.50/MWh, which index linked to 2023 is £128/MWh.
The last off-shore wind contracts were issued with a 15yr CfD of £37.50, with a current cost of £45/MWh.

So storage would roughly allow us to generate at 1/3rd the cost. And of course, most of the RE generation wouldn't require storage.


But, and it's a huge giant BUT, prices will now be much higher. The inflationary uplift following the invasion of Ukraine has pushed up the cost of metal, transport, construction etc etc.. This was seen in the last CfD auction, where no bids for off shore wind were submitted against the max bid price allowed of £44 (down from £46 when the £37.50 contracts were issued). That suggests a cost increase of more than 17.5%, pushing past the £44 price. [Note, those are 2012 baseline prices, so index linking would lift them, and the +17.5% would be on top again.]

For onshore wind, we saw the bids rise from £42.47 in the previous auction, to £52.29 (just under the £53 max), so a 23% increase in the 2012 baseline price, so on top of 'normal' index linking.

So, off shore wind will cost more now, some suggesting a 2012 baseline figure of £50 to £60 per MWh, but in fairness, those inflationary increases will hit nuclear just as hard, plus the impact of 15yrs of financing compounding the costs, before any income is received, and debt reduced.

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

While on the topic of battery storage I thought the vid below from Tony Seba released a couple of weeks ago might not go amiss!

It is clear that RE is being installed faster than Nat Grid/Ofgem had anticipated and they clearly did not like it in the first place. Before they have time to build the interconnectors Scotland to SE England a poilitical storn will/has hit regarding the time taken to connect the new RE particularly wind hence also curtailment. They are grasping for the low hanging fruit which can be much more quickly employed such as upgrading the capacity physically or rating (by thermal management), batts , and sychronous generators.

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.