Extreme Gridwatch Events Winter 2022/23

[Swwils]

We don't even have grid scale batteries on the ground let alone integrated with a turbine.

[dan_b]

I'm gonna say cost of construction.
When you see how Tesla is making MegaPacks - modular slabs which are designed to fit in a pre-formed concrete base which just happens to be the same size as a regular HGV trailer such that the whole thing can be placed and installed on site with minimal civils. Vs custom manufacture and difficult labour works to fit relatively small amounts of batteries inside a cramped working space?

As with everything else in this energy transition - do the stuff that's quick and cheap to do first - the sooner those new projects come on stream the better as the more impact they have overall. That helps drive down overall costs as things scale. Then you can do the fiddly/clever/niche/hardest bits last?

When you see photos of the insides of wind turbine towers they have nothing in them but a ladder. As wind is sporadic and really needs storage why
don't the owners pack the inside of those towers with batteries? By now they must have enough stats to work out what the optimum capacity should be. OK so you would have to have fire drenching etc but that has been done in battery rooms for years. I'm sure it would be economically viable.

[AGT]

That’s a coincidence l, I was speaking to my air con installer at work and they are working on wind turbines, installing air con units inside the turbine to maintain constant temp for the batteries..

He said it was a pain as they are based in Tayside and need to get the ferry to the job, so 5 hours on the go and generally site isn’t ready so lots of hanging about..

[chris_n]

When you see photos of the insides of wind turbine towers they have nothing in them but a ladder. As wind is sporadic and really needs storage why
don't the owners pack the inside of those towers with batteries? By now they must have enough stats to work out what the optimum capacity should be. OK so you would have to have fire drenching etc but that has been done in battery rooms for years. I'm sure it would be economically viable.

Don't really see the point, there is no curtailment between the turbine and the converter / substation. Far better put the batteries at or around that point to minimise any fire risk. Batteries could then be modular and far easier to install and maintain.

[hoggy]

I only come out the woodwork when my site gets mentioned!
Yesterday Ratcliffe had 3 Coal units on but by 2pm one of them had tripped. None of the other Coal ones were fired up so we had a bit of wiggle room left. As did a fair amount of the OCGT fleet and about half dozen of CCGT plants.
We did manage to top up our Gas Storage overnight still (and Rough is about 60% full but nowhere near the capacity it once had.)

As an aside Whitelee windfarm has its own battery system.

[Joeboy]

I only come out the woodwork when my site gets mentioned!
Yesterday Ratcliffe had 3 Coal units on but by 2pm one of them had tripped. None of the other Coal ones were fired up so we had a bit of wiggle room left. As did a fair amount of the OCGT fleet and about half dozen of CCGT plants.
We did manage to top up our Gas Storage overnight still (and Rough is about 60% full but nowhere near the capacity it once had.)

As an aside Whitelee windfarm has its own battery system.

What sort of size of battery store please?

[hoggy]

Details https://www.power-technology.com/market ... system-uk/
It was running last night @40MW around 5.30pm.

[Joeboy]

Details https://www.power-technology.com/market ... system-uk/
It was running last night @40MW around 5.30pm.

Thank you & WOW!

[Joeboy]

Details https://www.power-technology.com/market ... system-uk/
It was running last night @40MW around 5.30pm.

Was it outputting at 40MWh or is there an in/out limiting ratio?

[hoggy]

Right this is a bit of a crash course in the Balancing system so here goes.
Generation (& to an extent demand but not going into that) can participate in the balancing system but to do so they need to supply a constant stream of data (in half hour chunks) as to: What their Import Capacity is (MIL), Export Capacity (MEL), and ACTUAL(FPN) import/export power flow is in that period.
This all gets fed into National Grid/Elexon who can then see who's doing what, where & how much is available to allow them to make decisions - "you need to increase output, you need to lower output" to keep everything in balance (Load vs Demand) - you can see how good (or bad) they are doing with this lever pulling by what the grid frequency is (<50Hz Demand exceeding Supply : >50Hz Supply exceeding demand)

There's more to it than that but we'll be here all day: The good part about all this is that you now have a juicy data source. What I (Terravolt) do is pull all this info in & make it far more user friendly than what the Grid use (it's all hidden behind grid codes and not user friendly: Whitelee Battery is under the name: T_WHLWB-1 which yes doesn't take a genius to work out but that's an easy one.)

So if you pull up the stream for this one location: Here & then click the "Physical" button you should get a graph of all of yesterday.

You'll see it had an Export Limit (Green Line - MEL) of 50MW Max at the start. So upto 50MW can be called upon.
Import Limit (Light Blue - MIL) of 36MW until about 12:30pm (it charged for about half an hour (FPN went negative) & then MIL went to about 0 suggesting it was perhaps full.)
Power Flow (Purple Line - FPN) of 40MW from 17:00 to 18:00 (so 40MWh discharged)
MEL plummets to 0. Suggesting the battery is empty and is no longer able to supply anything to the grid. (Curiously MIL stayed 0 so perhaps it has to cool down or something.)