By Paul Homewood
h/t ianprsy
Has Silly Jilly moved to the Grauniad?
Scottish Power is to undertake the most ambitious battery power project in Europe in an attempt to unlock the potential of the UK’s wind and solar farms.
The company will connect an industrial-scale battery, the size of half a football pitch, to the Whitelee onshore windfarm early next year to capture more power from its 215 turbines.
The first major onshore wind power storage project will lead the way for a string of similar projects across at least six of Scottish Power’s largest renewable energy sites over the following 18 months.
It claims the 50MW battery systems promise a “significant step” on the road towards renewable energy, providing baseload, or continuous electricity supply, for the UK energy system
The battery has more than double the power capacity of any existing battery in the UK. It would take an hour to fully charge and could release enough electricity over an hour to fully charge 806 Nissan Leaf vehicles over a total of 182,000 miles, according to a spokesman for Scottish Power.
Keith Anderson, Scottish Power’s chief executive, said: “Batteries will take renewable energy to the next level. It is a nice, neat solution to help use more and more renewable power in the UK, because that’s what we need to be doing to reach a net zero-carbon economy.”
The lithium-ion battery will help Whitelee, already one of the largest onshore windfarms in Europe, to generate more renewable power by storing electricity when wind speeds are high, for use when the wind drops.
“Over a period of time, we will get to use much more wind output from the project, and across the whole of the country, because even at times of low demand we will be able to capture far more of the wind rather than wasting that potential energy,” he said.
As usual, Silly Jilly forgets to mention how long the battery will be able to supply power for.
The clue is that it will only take an hour to charge, suggesting that its capacity will be equally short.
But we can do some sums.
The Nissan Leaf, quoted above, has a battery capacity of 40 KWh, so 806 Leafs would equal just 32 MWh.
Given that Whitelee’s wind farm is rated at 539 MW, the new storage could replace Whitelee’s full capacity for the equivalent of just 3 minutes, in the event that the wind stopped blowing.
Even based on the wind farm’s average power utilisation of 30%, the figure would only rise to 12 minutes.
In simple terms, the battery is utterly irrelevant, even just for storing Whitelee’s power overnight, for use at peak times during the next day.
To put the numbers into perspective, to store enough power to cover a week’s loss of wind power at Whitelee, you would need 27048 MWh, assuming the average of 30% utilisation.
That’s 845 new batteries of this size.
According to Wind Power Monthly, Whitelee’s new battery will cost £20m. I some how doubt that Scottish Power will be prepared to spend £16.9bn on 845 of the things!
It is also claimed to be the biggest in Europe, but this simply shows just how pitifully small the rest are.
But what is the incentive for Scottish Power?
They will no doubt be banking on contracts under the Capacity Market mechanism, set up ironically to provide standby capacity to cover intermittent renewables!
Although currently under investigation by the EU, the CM could well be paying out £30/KW/Yr, which would net Scottish Power £900,000 annually.
The battery storage will also offer the opportunity to store power for sale during peak periods, when prices are much higher.
It may make its owners money, but what it will certainly not do is provide baseload, or continuous electricity supply, for the UK energy system, as Silly Jilly claims.
Footnote
You may have spotted this boo-boo from Jilly:
The lithium-ion battery will help Whitelee, already one of the largest onshore windfarms in Europe, to generate more renewable power by storing electricity
Perhaps somebody should tell her that batteries do not generate electricity!
If she has left the Telegraph for good, she will no doubt be delighted to see the back of all those awkward commenters there, who regularly rose up to flag up the nonsense she used to write. She will be much happier with the dopey Guardian readers!
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
June 11, 2019 at 09:21AM
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