Smart meters

[Bibio]

Originally Posted by Ruffy

Mainly because those battery fields don't exist yet!

On a similar theme, though, most of the business case considerations for North Sea interconnectors have included to some extent the concept that the wind-generated excess electricity in Scotland, or possibly the North Sea, could be used to provide power to pumped storage schemes in Norway. (Moving water up and down mountains, like Dinorwig, is equivalent to a lot of batteries!) In reverse, the hydro-electric power from Norway could supplement UK demand at times.

i'm sure that Scotland already has a few pumped storage hydro reservoirs.

i think the idea of using EV's battery's as backup is stupid.

[embee]

The problem with pumped water storage is that you need the geography. My folks live in East Anglia, apparently there is a planned battery storage scheme. Best height you can get over there is barely 100m and even that's only the odd hill near the north coast.
I agree, the idea of gazillions of joules stored up in a battery bank is a bit daunting. Pumped water is much more sensible where it is possible. Nature does it all the time (rain). However pumped storage needs excess cheap/clean power generation availability, I'm not sure we have any.

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by Ruffy

On a similar theme, though, most of the business case considerations for North Sea interconnectors have included to some extent the concept that the wind-generated excess electricity in Scotland, or possibly the North Sea, could be used to provide power to pumped storage schemes in Norway. (Moving water up and down mountains, like Dinorwig, is equivalent to a lot of batteries!) In reverse, the hydro-electric power from Norway could supplement UK demand at times.

That is its prime purpose, but it will be a while until we have sufficient 'spare' renewable electricity to send any their way. Right now it is mainly used to supplement our grid.

Originally Posted by Bibio

i'm sure that Scotland already has a few pumped storage hydro reservoirs.

Yes you do, quite a few. some still privately owned. Wales has a few too, most notably Dinorwig.

Originally Posted by embee

The problem with pumped water storage is that you need the geography. My folks live in East Anglia, apparently there is a planned battery storage scheme. Best height you can get over there is barely 100m and even that's only the odd hill near the north coast.
I agree, the idea of gazillions of joules stored up in a battery bank is a bit daunting. Pumped water is much more sensible where it is possible. Nature does it all the time (rain). However pumped storage needs excess cheap/clean power generation availability, I'm not sure we have any.

Norway are setting themselves up to be 'The battery of Europe' by building lots of pumped storage schemes. They are using their sovereign wealth fund for this to generate another national income stream for when oil runs out.

[Seeker]

Using old coal mines for energy storage:

https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/n...d_storage_syst

https://gravitricity.com/

[redtrummy]

Seeker - interesting

[Bibio]

Originally Posted by Seeker

Using old coal mines for energy storage:

https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/n...d_storage_syst

https://gravitricity.com/

thats clever.

[Ruffy]

Originally Posted by Bibio

i'm sure that Scotland already has a few pumped storage hydro reservoirs.

Originally Posted by Luckypants

Yes you do, quite a few. some still privately owned. Wales has a few too, most notably Dinorwig.

There's a good number of plants but most are conventional hydro-electric i.e water downhill to generate only. There's only a handful of true pumped storage installations in the UK that can pump the water back up to the top. Yes Dinorwig is the biggest and most well known.

[Ruffy]

Originally Posted by Seeker

Using old coal mines for energy storage:

https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/n...d_storage_syst

https://gravitricity.com/

I'm realising how out of date I'm becoming - I hadn't heard of this one but I like the concept.

For all the grief that the trading side of the UK electrity supply industry gets, there's a fair bit of innovation activity on the generation and networks side. Some very good ideas, some probably not so good but at least it's not stagnant and so there's a chance of moving away from fossil fuel dependency and inefficient balancing.

[Ruffy]

Originally Posted by Luckypants

Norway are setting themselves up to be 'The battery of Europe' by building lots of pumped storage schemes. They are using their sovereign wealth fund for this to generate another national income stream for when oil runs out.

Quite shrewd isn't it? Sadly a pretty stark contrast to how the UK used its similar North Sea opportunity and benefit.

Maybe our construction of the offshore windfarms will complement it quite nicely to give us some cost-effective security of supply for the future? Unless mainland European nuclear becomes the main source of surplus generation in which case the economics may swing against us a bit.

[ethariel]

Be an interesting watch today - https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ to see if Wind generation can handle high winds or whether multiple turbine farms are shut down as the latest storm blows through.