By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
Back to normal for the Telegraph, with this cheerleading article for battery power:
Blueprints for the world’s largest battery on the site of an old coal-fired power station in Manchester, storing enough energy for 36,000 homes for a week, have won approval from planning officials.
Carlton Power, an independent energy company, will need to raise £750m for the plant and is “advanced talks” to raise the funds, it said. It will then need to pick a supplier.
Battery plants are seen as a way to smooth out power demand as more electricity comes from intermittent sources like wind and solar.
Batteries can charge on windy or sunny days cheaply, or even for free, and then deploy that power when needed. The plant is expected to offer the equivalent of 2,080 megawatts – a decent sized power station – for an hour.
Planning permission was granted by Trafford Council. Carlton has also won approval for a green hydrogen project in the area.
Councillor Tom Ross, the leader of Trafford Council, said: “The Trafford battery energy storage scheme, alongside the Trafford Green Hydrogen scheme, places Trafford and Greater Manchester at the forefront of the UK’s energy transition. The two schemes will help address our climate crisis – one of Trafford Council’s corporate priorities – and will support our region’s plan to reach a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2038.”
It will be built at the Trafford Low Carbon Energy Park in Greater Manchester, which will also host the world’s first commercial liquid air storage system, being built by Highview Power, another energy storage firm, using its cryobattery technology.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/07/24/manchester-plans-worlds-largest-battery-wind-energy/
The reporter clearly does not understand just how puny this storage will be in terms of our overall energy mix.
It will store about 2 GWh. But daily electricity consumption is likely to be around 2000 GWh by 2035. And we would need many weeks of storage to cover for low winds in winter.
What the storage plant will do is make a decent profit by buying power at low prices during time of surplus, and selling it back at high prices when supplies are tight because of the intermittency of wind power.
And guess who will end up paying for those profits?
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
July 25, 2023 at 04:09AM
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