Battery Electricity Storage being built in Scotland

[Spectric]

composites do not "rust"

What about the problem of osmosis that boats with composite hulls can suffer from, if land based blades only have a finite life then in the harsher conditions this lifespan can be reduced. Then we have gearbox issues,

https://www.htlgroup.com/general/why-do-turbine-gearboxes-fail/

Now maybe these could be solved if they used a fluid coupling but who knows, changing a gearbox offshore is more involved but the cost is around £500K.

Now battery storage would resolve many current problems when we have no wind but could we ever reach the point where you could run most of the uk from just batteries for say a few days until the wind picked up, we are talking of Giga watts per hour !

What we really need to do is build only energy efficient homes that require very little energy to keep warm with more than just 230 volt circuits. All the lighting could be low voltage and run directly from a low voltage circuit which would easily be achieved with solar tiles on the roof and a local battery backup, now think of the reduction in demand if a large percentage of homes did not use the grid for lighting.

 

[Hypnotic Chimera]

What about the problem of osmosis that boats with composite hulls can suffer from, if land based blades only have a finite life then in the harsher conditions this lifespan can be reduced. Then we have gearbox issues,

https://www.htlgroup.com/general/why-do-turbine-gearboxes-fail/

Now maybe these could be solved if they used a fluid coupling but who knows, changing a gearbox offshore is more involved but the cost is around £500K.

Now battery storage would resolve many current problems when we have no wind but could we ever reach the point where you could run most of the uk from just batteries for say a few days until the wind picked up, we are talking of Giga watts per hour !

What we really need to do is build only energy efficient homes that require very little energy to keep warm with more than just 230 volt circuits. All the lighting could be low voltage and run directly from a low voltage circuit which would easily be achieved with solar tiles on the roof and a local battery backup, now think of the reduction in demand if a large percentage of homes did not use the grid for lighting.

I don't disagree for one moment about the specific engineering challenges of any of this technology. But where specific challenges exist (sea-water and salty air) the most appropriate and relevant engineering solutions will be deployed.

It's a case of not allowing perfection to be the enemy of the good.

 

[Spectric]

It's a case of not allowing perfection to be the enemy of the good.

The issue we face in so many departments is that the end goal always seems to be about making money, the core infrastructure like energy and transportation should be seen as the framework of an economy and there to support it whilst not making huge profits, think of it almost as being a loss leader. Is it more important to get many people to a place of work easily to make money for a business to in turn grow the economy or to hit them with high cost and an unreliable service that makes a profit at the detriment of many other businesses.

 

[Hypnotic Chimera]

The issue we face in so many departments is that the end goal always seems to be about making money, the core infrastructure like energy and transportation should be seen as the framework of an economy and there to support it whilst not making huge profits, think of it almost as being a loss leader. Is it more important to get many people to a place of work easily to make money for a business to in turn grow the economy or to hit them with high cost and an unreliable service that makes a profit at the detriment of many other businesses.

I utterly and absolutely agree with you. Electricity ought to be Nationalised and Not for Profit. So too should Public Transport.

Absolutely everywhere I turn I see the ghoul of "profit" turning things sour.
I first became more aware in this "profit" thing over 10 years ago when there was a run of "bad news" stories about the economy. Apparently it was a really bad sign that Tesco's "profits" had fallen in one quarter, by a small percentage. There was much doom and gloom about this - what really struck my interest was that Tesco had still generated over £800million (or some such ludicrous figure), in profit. In one quarter alone. This is pure profit, after all expenditure including wages and servicing their indebtedness.
I guess my question is why is it so very important to constantly increase one's profit, when it is so very very high anyway? It's astonishing. Anyway - I have to say that profit going down in a quarter to £800 million - my heart bled.

The really, really galling thing is that there is so much pressure from the supermarkets (because big business profit is the be all and end all) that farmers cannot set fair prices on the food that they produce and have suffered huge depression of their ability to operate. It is this ghoul of big-business profit at the expense of smaller business that needs to be rebalanced.

 

[pip1954]

I can't remember the story but the people building the equipment for under water electric generation it was on tv a while back they had built prototypes about a 1 third size but the good part it had very few moving parts it worked by mimicking the wave movement so using joints . They had perfected the system and where looking to build full size soon.

 

[TRITON]

last year we imported about 13% of the electricity we used, it's good that it goes both ways.

I know im a bloody cynic, but I suspect we probably didnt need to import anything, but theres money to be made by someone affiliated to the tory party somewhere in those transactions

 

[Scruples]

In a recent discussion we chatted about Net Zero and the need for fossil fuel to "fill in the gaps" when wind and solar weren't generating.

So how's about a massive battery storage facility that charges off solar and wind when excess is being generated:

Power for 3 million homes

Huge flywheels have also been talked about to save the energey from intermittent energy devices. Nuclear is the ovious non-fossil-fuel power source, but it will take time to build enough. The waste fuel could be addressed to the Sun and posted, but at what cost, one asks?

 

[DrPhill]

Huge flywheels have also been talked about to save the energey from intermittent energy devices. Nuclear is the ovious non-fossil-fuel power source, but it will take time to build enough. The waste fuel could be addressed to the Sun and posted, but at what cost, one asks?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

 

[Yorkieguy]

This is what we’re up against as well.

In the video he mentions the battery system installed at Pillswood in Cottingham, which is the village where I live.

It was completed in Nov 2022 on the outskirts of the village, and went ahead with no fuss and bother and no objections. Indeed, I doubt many residents here even know it exists, so no 'NIMBIEs' here.

BBC news report at the time:

‘What is thought to be Europe's biggest battery energy storage system has begun operating near Hull’.

The site, said to be able to store enough electricity to power 300,000 homes for two hours, went online at Pillswood, Cottingham, on Monday. The Pillswood facility has the capacity to store up to 196 MWh energy in a single cycle. It has been built next to the National Grid's Creyke Beck substation, which will be connected to Dogger Bank, the world's largest offshore wind farm, when it launches in the North Sea later this decade.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-63707463

The press release for the Scottish Coalburn project states for the ‘Developers say the two huge neighbouring battery farms - one at the site of a former opencast coal mine - will store enough electricity to power three million homes’. Well yes, but not for long!

There are 2.45 million households in Scotland, so it would power all of those plus a bit left over. But, to get it into perspective, the giant batteries will only operate for two hours at a time before being depleted. Then they have to be recharged with electricity, with attendant efficiency losses, but then if there is surplus generating capacity at off peak times, it makes sense.

The developers - Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) - have confirmed that construction will begin shortly on stage two. The Devilla site will take the company's storage capacity up to 1.5GW.

On the theme of renewable energy projects, again in our village, an 11,000 panel solar farm was installed in 2022 to help power Castle Hill Hospital - a specialist regional centre for cardiology, oncology and haematology for example, and it boasts one of just a handful of specialist infectious diseases units around the country.

The solar panels didn't cause any local fuss, bother or objections - quite the reverse, it was welcomed and supported.

 

[Spectric]

But, to get it into perspective, the giant batteries will only operate for two hours at a time before being depleted. Then they have to be recharged with electricity,

Those laws of physic's just keep getting in the way !

The advantage is obviously that they can be charged when under normal circumstances the wind turbines are not needed to meet demand but you would need eight of these battery farms to meet just the Scottish demand for two hours and it looks to be the size of about 2.5 football pitches so an area equivalent to twenty pitches.

Anyone any idea of the feed in voltage, conversion from Dc to 50Hz Ac but at 132Kv or a lower voltage ?

 

[Vulcan]

I know im a bloody cynic, but I suspect we probably didnt need to import anything, but theres money to be made by someone affiliated to the tory party somewhere in those transactions

I don’t know, but the French seem to produce excess electricity from their Nuclear power plants and as they own or have large investments in our energy suppliers …

As I write this is the current (pun intended ) input/output of the bi-directional interconnects with Europe.