From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ralf Ellis
This is not just dishonest, it is dangerously so!
https://twitter.com/nationalgriduk/status/1862462972624294015?s=12
The storage will be 600 MWh, and is not designed to “be used when needed”. Hornsea 3 will have a capacity of 2.9 GW, so 600 MWh would only be enough to last 12 minutes when the wind stops blowing.
Its real role is to balance grid frequency, as wind output can fluctuate even on a minute to minute basis.
This storage would not be needed if we were not so reliant on wind power, and its costs won’t be borne by Oersted, who will either be paid handsomely by the National Grid for balancing services, or alternatively profit from the high power prices on offer at times of short supply.
The National Grid, however, are being deceitful by trying to persuade the public that storage schemes like this one will solve the problem of wind intermittency.
With all of these huge storage and EV batteries connected to communications networks, why do I keep thinking about pagers?
Might want to exclude Israeli firms from involvement.
You Don’t need to worry about Israel. The pager incidents were for Hezbollah. You only need worry if the UK were being run by terrorist organizations line Hezbollah or Hamas
But even without explosives, think how vunerable such storage might be to bad state actors (North Korea, China, Iran, Russia)
You don’t know the UK Political parties do you!!
Or Russian.
Unused pager radio band would be good for organizing power resources.
or (((others)))
As useful as a Flywheel !!!
Nope. Flywheel still needed for the sub 6 second stability control. In Australia the flywheels are installed as synchronous condensers so over voltage control as well as frequency control.
Batteries do not offer inertia to ride through millisecond fault clearance times.
UK will be getting serious about operating separated from Europe when they have maybe 10GW of synchronous capacity connected and spinning.
Project Rassau provides a 76MW synchronous condenser so a long way to go yet to be independent of France and Drax. New nuclear also qualifies as synchronous capacity assuming it is spinning and connected.
Australia is getting worse. No more flywheels very soon.
https://joannenova.com.au/2024/12/solar-power-is-so-good-the-govt-needs-emergency-powers-to-switch-your-panels-off-in-case-they-crash-the-national-grid/
And why is that? Because with 2 year’s result from my new 6.64kW rooftop solar in Adelaide it has produced an average of 17.6% of nameplate 24/7/365. That’s a Mediterranean climate with 500mm average rainfall and no snow but a daily output can max out at 44kWhrs in ideal sunshine and temp but drop down to a measly 1.8kWhrs on a wet drizzly July day. Even last Sunday it produced 42kWhrs but only 25kWhrs the day after on cloudy Monday working day.
You want an average of 6.64kW of power 24/7/365 you clearly need at least SIX times that in panels and inverter and God only knows what sort of batteries for dispatchability before we start talking about voltage and frequency. These are the same folks who tried to sell us all sleepy and gigglepot as Presidential material recently but they’d like another $20million to balance the $1.5billion books if you’re still keen.
I’m sure solar did NOT produce electricity 24/7/365. I know you talked about “average” but that reference is still misleading given that solar produces nothing all night, every night.
Stuff struggletown we just have to wait for the greenouts now-
‘Appalling’: AEMO requests powers to shut off solar power amid system collapse fears
12 minutes?
That’s three times the four minute warning. Possibly enough to boil the kettle.
Boiling the kettle will reduce it to 11 minutes.
/humor
Just substitute a coal stove and an old fashioned cast iron Kettle and you can free yourself of the chains of “scheduling” your tea.
If you live anywhere near the battery complex and it goes bang you’ll have no warning at all.
You could boil some water on the fire.
If you have something with a really long handle!
One of the lies is the existence of “excess wind energy” to be used to charge the batteries: there isn’t any. Windpower never exceeds demand for more than a few minutes at the times of lowest use – when production from reliable energy sources is at margin. Power available to the grid, that is in excess to demand comes from non-intermittent sources, and is wasted as heat. The payment and subsidy schemes by which wind turbine generation facilities are built require that all produced electricity be “sold” at a premium to the distribution network.
Storage batteries add to demand. Charging batteries requires disposing of electricity at a lower price, a discount. Wind-charged storage batteries must provide electricity to the grid at a higher price than the energy used to charge them.
If wind turbines are generating electricity, and that energy is not sold to the transmission carrier at the premium price, they are reducing their useful service life at a cost to the turbine operator. It is wasteful to operate the turbines without overcompensation. Unless the operator receives the premium price per, they waste their limited resource.
All this without adding the battery charge/discharge ‘cost’ (as heat), and the cost of charge maintenance (as demand), and the wonderful batteries are a dead loss to the system, while ratepayers are over charged for costly, premium priced subsidies paid to the turbine operators.
“Wind-charged storage batteries must provide electricity to the grid at a higher price than the energy used to charge them.”
Half an idea. I don’t disagree with the idea that battery storage has efficiency cost (transmission, charging, discharging). “Wind-charged storage batteries must” … or else what?
I think that I can rephrase my earlier, awkward statement to answer your question:
In order to be worth the cost of the facility, an energy storage facility must charge more for energy delivered to the user (grid, appliance) than it cost to pay for the energy going in.
“Or else” it will be a waste of time, effort, money, space, materials for an owner/operator to build and operate the facility.
Nothing is for free. In an energy poor society, intermittent electrical energy generators have no “spare” capacity. Every watt-hour costs money to create and distribute. “Grid scale” batteries are foisted on a gullible, rate paying public as if building and charging were free.
Or else the battery owner isn’t getting paid, I suppose.
“Storage batteries add to demand.”
Knowing nothing about engineering nor energy- I’d presume there is some inefficiency in storing energy in such batteries? So, assuming there is some excess energy to store in the batteries, how much is lost due to all the reasons energy is lost when moving it around and storing it? Just curious.
Sorry, but the answer will be system specific, and I’m not really qualified to answer. Recommend Douglas Pollack for engineering analyses on any power generation system.
IMO, a rule of thumb for optimists (not engineers): for storage of energy, count on getting out 75% of what you put in on a really GOOD day.
A rule of thumb for bookkeepers: you need to be paid 15% over costs in order just to break even.
And “co-location” idea…electrically, there is little quantifiable difference between locating the battery next to the source and anywhere else on the grid. There is some difference in transmission line losses, but that could be made up having less line loss to the load centers.
“Co-location” is a feel good concept that is not born out in reality.
If a wind generation facility was designed to include storage,and it was used for output “smoothing”, and the entire facility system was rated for a realistic output, and the cost to consumers was identical to that produced from reliable sources, it would never recover construction and operating costs. The grid is a distribution network, not a storage network. The proper place for storage is at point-of-use.
If a wind turbine or pv panel was rated by its true carbon footprint, in terms of petroleum,coal, and natural gas used for construction and operations, there would be lynchings.
Wait a minute. The quoted material states… it’s a 300MW system capable of storing 600MWh. So, that’s 300MW for two hours. That’s certainly not going to cover a lull in the wind which can last days or more.
It also says 600MWh is equivalent to the daily energy use of 80,000 homes. That’s 7.5kWh per home. That sounds plausible for electricity use, but not for energy use. That’s because, according to Ofgem, the average medium sized house also uses 32.87kWh of natural gas. And of course, the nut zero freaks insist the natural gas service be disconnected.
Plus, to charge your EV.
What could go wrong?!
Eco-Nazi stupidity will leave those stupid enough to keep voting for it in a common state of affairs. It’s called freezing and starving in the dark.
“Hornsea 3 will have a capacity of 2.9 GW, so 600 MWh would only be enough to last 12 minutes when the wind stops blowing.”
Rounded 2.9 GW to 3 GW
3GW/600 MWh=5/h
Invert /h to get 1/5h… 12 minutes.
Yeah okay it looked wrong. That’s… bad.
This is a 2-hour battery system
It will have about 100 trailer-side battery packs
Such batteries are operated from a max of 80% full to a min of 20% full, so only 60% of capacity is available for storage, per Tesla recommend for long 15-y life.
In practice, such batteries typically operate not at 60%, but at 40% or less
If battery is 20% full, 60% is taken from the grid, until 80% full.
About 20% is lost, due to A-to-Z losses
With numbers
At start, 0.2 x 600 MWh is the charge in battery
Taken from HV grid 1/0.9, upstream losses x 0.6 x 600 MWh
Charge in battery 120 MWh + 360 MWh = 480 MWh (80% charged)
Delivered to HV grid 480 x 0.9, downstream losses = 432 MWh as AC, if 60% operation, 288 MWh, if 40% operation.
Such systems cost about $600/kWh as AC
The real world numbers are sobering, to sat the least
See
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hornsdale-power-reserve-largest-battery-system-in-australia
Yeah … Right … Good luck with that …
Note that the “dunkelflaute” about a month ago, from the 1st to the 9th of November, can probably be more accurately translated as “dark doldrums” rather than the usual “wind drought”.
I like that term- dunkelflaute!
Rhymes with sauerkraut. Which I hate.
Leave it to German to come up with a word that just has that certain something when describing deliciously karma-esque outcomes.
I know this is not the right place for this question, but where is the USCRN U.S. reading for October? I checked the NOAA site and September is the last observation. The October point should have arrived weeks ago.
Very nice Paul, Lying is not okay, the CAGW crowd knows that but can’t abandon lying because that is all they have
The ‘average’ person believes this shows we have grid battery storage capable of providing electricity for extended periods.
Why do you think they publish 2.9 GW rather than 600 MW-Hr?
Bigger is better and most do not know they are at the edge of the cliff.
And as George Carlin took pleasure in pointing out, half of the population is dumber than that!