from NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
The plans of mice and men!
From the Telegraph:
The thousands of batteries being deployed to stabilise Britain’s electricity networks could bring down the grid, government experts have warned.
Ministers have been warned of the risk of a crash if operators all try to charge up their batteries at the same time to avoid an energy shortage.
A report by the so-called Panel of Technical Experts handed to Miatta Fahnbulleh, the new Energy Secretary, said: “Some thought needs to be given to the way battery energy storage systems are likely to behave in a capacity market notice situation, as operators may then have an incentive to charge in advance to fulfil their obligations. This may result in a fast descent into a stress event.”
A capacity market notice is a critical warning issued by the National Energy System Operator (Neso) when it spots a looming electricity shortage caused, for example, by low wind.
They have historically been used to tell gas-fired power stations, which are paid to be on standby for such events, to get warmed up and ready.
However, battery pack operators have recently begun breaking into the same market as the move away from stable generation from fossil fuels makes it more difficult to balance the grid. These batteries must be fully charged to work effectively.
The experts raised concerns that operators would spot a looming spell of high demand or low wind-powered generation and start charging up simultaneously in a move that could overwhelm the grid and trigger the very shortage they were trying to avoid.
The warning follows a substantial increase in the number of batteries deployed to back up and stabilise the UK’s power networks.
UK power grids have about 7GW of batteries in place with a collective output slightly greater than all five of Britain’s nuclear power stations. By 2030, UK grid battery capacity is expected to exceed 20GW.
Full story here.
The whole business case for battery storage is to recharge when electricity prices are low, and sell when they are high.
Given the algorithms driving operation, that will tend to lead to most of that 20 GW wanting to recharge at the same time – such as midday on a sunny day.
As a consequence, electricity will be drained from the grid. Just as bad, they will all tend to discharge in the evening when supply is short and prices high.
The problem is that, just as with embedded wind and solar power, NESO have absolutely no control over battery charging/discharging. Worse still, it is not even visible to them. If a gas plant broke down, they would immediately know and be able to take corrective action.
But if lots of batteries start charging simultaneously, they would just see it as an increase in demand, which they had not forecast.
As each chapter of this looming debacle is unveiled, we see that they are all inter-related and the direct consequence of the ill-thought out dash to intermittent, weather dependent energy.
Wind and solar power is not dependable, so the “answer” is to build more. But building more leads to massive surpluses at times, while still not addressing the underlying problem of supplying electricity when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.
So, we must build lots of battery storage. Which in turn destabilise the grid even further!
This is what happens when you let politicians and Net Zero zealots design an energy system.
As so often, Kathryn Porter sums it up best:
“Batteries are very expensive. A better option is to not build intermittent generation and then we wouldn’t need batteries or the extra grid infrastructure or the backup delivered by the capacity market”
FOOTNOTE
I am not going to let the Telegraph get away with this howler:
UK power grids have about 7GW of batteries in place with a collective output slightly greater than all five of Britain’s nuclear power stations.
As so often, they are confusing CAPACITY with OUTPUT.
Battery storage is typically no more than an hour’s worth. You cannot compare their output with that of our nuclear fleet, which runs 24/7.
Whereas nuclear provides around 12% of UK power, one hour’s storage is enough for 10 minutes, after which it would need recharging.
