Europe's biggest battery storage system switched on

[Finishline42]

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.

snip

The Pillswood facility has the capacity to store up to 196 MWh energy in a single cycle.

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

Tesla is projected to make 442 Megapacks in Q3 2022 which is an 85% increase over Q2 2022

https://insideevs.com/news/609777/tesla-cranking-out-powerwalls-megapacks-giga-nevada/

[NNadir]

1. We're saved!

Unless, of course, one recognizes that burning gas to charge batteries causes one to burn more gas, or if one hasn't avoided science classes to get a degree in journalism and thus thinks a "home" is a unit of energy or that a day is two hours long.

It's obscene how easily advertisers assume stupidity.

The unit of energy is the Joule. Last year, the world consumed 624 Exajoules an all time record. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere hit 421.63 ppm in the planetary atmosphere. The single fastest growing forms of primary energy - primary energy being the kind of energy that energy storage wastes - was oil, which grew 11 Exajoules to 183 Exajoules; the second fastest growing were coal and dangerous natural gas. Britain's largest provider of electricity is natural gas. They dump the waste directly into the planetary atmosphere and when they burn gas to charge batteries, they burn even more gas than the would have without the batteries. That's a law of physics, not that anyone who thinks a "home" is a unit of energy gives a rat's ass about the laws of physics.

Giving the fascist billionaire Elon Musk to buy more Cobalt Slaves in the "Democratic Republic" of Congo to make more "Megapacks" isn't going to do a damn thing for the environment, in fact, as is increasingly obvious, doing so is making things worse, particularly because all the megapacks will be landfill in less than 20 years, assuming they don't catch fire before that.

Don't worry. Be happy. Musk is "green," because money is green.



Source: 2022 IEA World Energy Outlook Table A 1a, page 435

[Finishline42]

3. There are 3 off shore wind farms in the area

Hornsea, Westermost Rough and Humber Gateway.

[NNadir]

4. Really? For how many seconds out of the last 31,556,736 seconds that passed in 2021 did they...

...produce so much electricity that all of the gas plants in Great Britain could turn off long enough to cover the climate cost of restarting them, with so much electricity left over that it could be thermodynamically wasted to charge batteries?

The batteries and the wind turbines will all be landfill before today's toddlers graduate as undergraduates from college, hopefully with some knowledge of the second law of thermodynamics.

[Finishline42]

5. Record Wind in Scotland Means Grid Tells Some Turbines to Stop

Wind farms across the UK are producing more electricity than the grid is able to cope with, forcing the network operator to ask some turbines in Scotland to shut down.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-25/uk-wind-power-sets-record-on-gusty-weather?leadSource=uverify%20wall

I wonder how many times this has happened?

[NNadir]

6. Oh, the famous curtailments... These are reported on the CAISO and other grids once in a while.

These are the periods when the wind blows so much, that unless the grid operators pay for more miners to string copper wires over ever greater distances - in California this practice led to sparking massive fires - there are people who think paying Elon Musk to buy cobalt slaves would be a better idea.

If one wonders how many times this has happened, if not in Scotland, one can in fact look at grid data say in CAISO or ERCOT, two other grids that have invested heavily in the wind scam, wind produced trivial or no energy during the climate induced extreme heat events in 2022. Those events, I remind anyone who might be interested in either ethical or engineering reality - obviously excluding anti-nukes - occurred in part because in this century humanity squandered trillions of dollars on wind energy which did nothing to address climate change. There is lots of data one could study. I know because I do it all the time.

Or one can vaguely point to an article written by journalists, journalists being in my view, in general, people, who like most of their fellow antinukes, cannot claim to have passed a college level science course with a grade of C or better.

Of course, we hear from these sorts all of the time, who love to shout insipidly that so called "renewable energy" briefly - almost always for a period when power demand is effectively minimized - provided, in "percent talk" 70% or 80% or 90% or even 100% of the energy in some area. I've seen lots of these kinds of posts here over my 20 year tenure here, during which the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide concentrations in the planetary atmosphere - a subject about which anti-nukes couldn't care less - rose by more than 46 ppm. In the week beginning 11/24/2002, that concentration was 372.68 ppm. The figures over the last 5 days were:

November 23: 418.83 ppm
November 22: 418.51 ppm
November 21: 418.47 ppm
November 20: 418.08 ppm
November 19: 417.37 ppm
Last Updated: November 24, 2022

Recent Daily Average Mauna Loa CO2 (Accessed 11/25/2022)


Now according to the journalists cited in the OP, who think that the "home" is a unit of energy - it isn't - we should all applaud because of "curtailments," the rarity of which can be easily grasped by looking at serious readily available data on major grids like CAISO and ERCOT, and thus cheer for funding the fascist Elon Musk so he can buy more cobalt slaves.

I dissent.

I understand why the grid prices in areas heavily invested in so called "renewable energy" are almost always higher than average prices everywhere else, notably nuclear powered grids. The reason is that during those brief periods when the wind is blowing heavily, electricity on the grid is worthless, not just for the wind and solar junk, but also for the redundant reliable systems that so called "renewable energy" needs to address sometimes lengthy periods, sometimes lasting days or weeks, of Dunkelflaute. This raises the cost of the reliable systems because they cannot recover the costs of the O&M, with the result that poor people need to pay high electricity prices so rich assholes can carry on insipidly about what is and is not "green."

The unit of energy is not the "home." Again, it's the Joule. How many Joules of "excess" wind energy are stored by the batteries Musk obtained by the use of his cobalt slaves? More importantly, how many wind turbines and Musk batteries would it take to slow the rate of accumulation of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide from it's current level of approximately 2.45 ppm per year in 2022 to the rate observed when I joined DU in 2002 to hear 20 years of cheering for batteries and the like in "percent talk," 1.66 ppm?

Musk's cobalt slaves are going to save the world? Really? This justifies slavery? Really?

There is an interesting book my son bought for me a few Christmases ago, extremely painful reading, devastating really, called The Half Has Never Been Told. It's about the foundations of American Capitalist wealth, to this day, having come from human slavery, but as it happens, American Slavery also enriched Great Britain, leading the Confederacy to be sure "King Cotton" would lead to British recognition of their slave "Republic," as much of a "Republic" for its black subjects as the "Democratic Republic" of Congo is for modern day cobalt slaves. The justification for slavery was that it provided wealth. I have never gotten fully through that book. When I've tried, I had to put it down weeping.

Batteries don't really provide wealth; they provide an illusion of wealth, as well as liabilities for future generations; toddlers today will be charged with cleaning this shit up in their 20s. In any case, "King cobalt" is no more justified in 2022 than was "King Cotton" in 1822.

It is clearly possible to provide long lived reliable clean energy without the dangerous fossil fuels for generations if we don't credit the selective attention of moral Lilliputians.

Personally cheering for trivialities, 2 hours of power in units of "homes," using Musk's batteries, strikes me as morally oblivious. I'm sure, again, here "The Half" will never be told.

The problem before humanity isn't the accumulation of more piles of redundant junk. The problem is climate change. This crap in Scotland has no bearing on climate change. It's a trivial, useless affectation.

Cheering for it strikes me as obscene.

I trust everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. "Copper wires"

Nit to pick. Many transmission lines are made of steel-reinforced aluminum.

These are the periods when the wind blows so much, that unless the grid operators pay for more miners to string copper wires over ever greater distances - in California this practice led to sparking massive fires - there are people who think paying Elon Musk to buy cobalt slaves would be a better idea.

Types of Conductors Used in Overhead Power Lines

By Kiran Daware Kiran is a guest author for Peak Demand’s Knowledge Center and editor of Electrical Easy found at electricaleasy.com.

A conductor is one of the most important components of overhead lines. Selecting a proper type of conductor for overhead lines is as important as selecting economic conductor size and economic transmission voltage. A good conductor should have the following properties:

• high electrical conductivity
• high tensile strength to withstand mechanical stresses
• relatively lower cost without compromising much of other properties
• lower weight per unit volume



Conductor Materials

Copper was the preferred material for overhead conductors in earlier days, but, aluminum has replaced copper because of the much lower cost and lighter weight of the aluminum conductor compared with a copper conductor of the same resistance. Following are some materials that are good conductors.

• Copper: Copper has a high conductivity and greater tensile strength. So, copper in hard drawn stranded form is a great option for overhead lines. Copper has a high current density which means more current carrying capacity per unit cross-sectional area. Therefore, copper conductors have relatively smaller cross-sectional area. Also, copper is durable and has high scrap value. However, due to its higher cost and non-availability, copper is rarely used for overhead power lines.

• Aluminum: Aluminum has about 60% of the conductivity of copper; that means, for the same resistance, the diameter of an aluminum conductor is about 1.26 times than that of a copper conductor. However, an aluminum conductor has almost half the weight of an equivalent copper conductor. Also, tensile strength of aluminum is less than that of copper. Considering combined factors of cost, conductivity, tensile strength, weight etc., aluminum has an edge over copper. Therefore, aluminum is being widely used for overhead conductors.

{snip}

Something like half the power used in Los Angeles comes from the Bonneville Dam, on the Columbia River. The transmission lines come down past Klamath Falls and over the Siskiyous.

Sat Apr 8, 2017: You got me wondering how much the Pacific DC Intertie brought in.

Pacific DC Intertie

{snip}

The Pacific DC Intertie (also called Path 65) is an electric power transmission line that transmits electricity from the Pacific Northwest to the Los Angeles area using high voltage direct current (HVDC). The line capacity is 3,100 megawatts, which is enough to serve two to three million Los Angeles households and represents almost half (48.7%) of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) electrical system's peak capacity.

{snip}

A linked page says that the capacity of the Celilo Converter Station, near The Dalles, Oregon, was upgraded to 3,800 megawatts in 2016.

[NNadir]

8. Ok. I buy that. Of course the high resistivity leads to higher transmission losses...

...through higher heat generation. We note that transmission of electricity in California has been responsible for multiple fires, massive fires, with the result that PSEG needs to cut off power on especially windy, dry, hot days, the result being energy poverty.

Here's another "nit" to pick. It is impossible to say that "half of Los Angeles" power comes from the Bonneville dam, despite the often stupid remarks that some people claim that they only buy wind and solar power.

Electrons do not come with labels. There is no way to sort them to determine whence the energy provided to them came.

They flow into the grid maintained by CAISO. One can say, either accounting for transmission losses or ignoring them, that the Bonneville dam produces half as much power as is consumed in Los Angeles, and that the CAISO administered grid has connects to that dam, but the power in Los Angeles comes from all the sources of power serving that grid, including imported coal energy, even though Los Angeles Department of Power and Water says it will be "coal free" when it shuts the Intermountain coal plant in Utah in 2025, and claim to run it on hydrogen (95% certain to have been made by wasting the energy in dangerous natural gas).

There's quite a number of stupid three card monty games going on in energy, and California is absolutely the worst example of spreading specious fantasies to pretend they're not killing the future with their electrical grid. They can spin all they want, but reality bites.

[Finishline42]

9. You might want to take a look at the difference in HVAC and HVDC transmission lines

Pacific Northwest to the Los Angeles area using high voltage direct current (HVDC)

An HVDC line has considerably lower losses compared to HVAC over longer distances. Controllability: Due to the absence of inductance in DC, an HVDC line offers better voltage regulation. Also, HVDC offers greater controllability compared to HVAC.

[NNadir]

10. I have a full sized wall map of the entire electric grid of the United States, albeit more than...

...ten years old.

Of course, this map was made before California started to string together a huge array of power lines to connect more than 1500 square miles of trashed wilderness to connect wind turbines that often fail to produce as much power as the Diablo Canyon plant produces in a 12 acre footprint, including the parking lot.

I've long been aware of the HVDC line running from the LAWPD coal plant in Utah to LA, Path 27. It's been in place for decades, way back when the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide was under 380 ppm, in the way I might choose to measure time, 45-50 ppm ago.

I'm not an anti-nuke; I've successfully taken advanced courses in physics and I have full access to the world's scientific literature which I use on a daily basis.

I really, really, really, really, really don't need to be lectured on the subject of what I should and should not look at by people whose obvious contempt for the laws of physics and the nature of industrial energy scales defy rational thought.

Is it true or untrue that PSEG had to pay a $2.1 billion fine because Musk worshipping advocates of so called "renewable energy," which has failed to do anything to address climate change think stringing more and more and more and more powerlines connected to diffuse junk is "THE answer?"

The answer to what? Celebrations of futility and indifference? Generating fires?

Again, how much money should we send to Elon Musk to buy cobalt slaves so he can make enough batteries to reduce the rate of growth in the concentrations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide to under 2.00 ppm per year, where it last was in 2014, or under 1.50 ppm/year, where it last was in 2001. We've already spent well over three trillion dollars on solar and wind in this century. How much does Elon need? How many cobalt slaves should he buy? Surely it's good for business, as the battery future looks bright, no?

Enjoy the weekend.

[Finishline42]

11. Point of order

Please explain how Diablo Canyon Power Plant distributes it's 2258 MW of electricity?

Since it's located in a county of less than 300k population, it surely is using HVAC transmission lines that lose significant amounts of power as it sends power to Fresno and Kern counties and beyond (of course this is true with just about every nuclear power plant in the country).

Have a cell phone? Are you going to stop using it because it uses cobalt as well. Do you fly? Order from Amazon or use UPS or Federal Express for your online orders? They all use cobalt in their jet engines.

I estimated that it took 40 Megapacks for this station outside of Hull, England (based on the photo). Last Quarter Tesla mfg enough of them to make similar stations times eleven. They will continue to be installed to replace fossil fueled plants all over the world.

6,500 Powerwalls a week. Yep, they are expensive but if I lived in CA or Texas, I certainly would be buying one and selling power back to the utility during peak demand periods.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

12. I don't think it's accurate to say that these battery packs will "replace fossil fueled plants ..."

I estimated that it took 40 Megapacks for this station outside of Hull, England (based on the photo). Last Quarter Tesla mfg enough of them to make similar stations times eleven. They will continue to be installed to replace fossil fueled plants all over the world.

Fossil fueled plants generate electricity and send it on its merry way. Battery packs receive electricity generated by some source, which could be a few things, and store it until the supply can't keep with the demand. Then they send out the electricity, until they run out. That looks like two hours, tops, right now. I'm sure the technology will improve.

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.

[Finishline42]

13. Depends on how they are managed

I was using the example from the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia.

Benefits for the consumers
By the end of 2018, it was estimated that the Power Reserve had saved A$40 million in costs, mostly in eliminating the need for a fuel-powered 35 MW Frequency Control Ancillary Service.[39] In 2019, grid costs were reduced by $116 million due to the operation of HPR.[40] Almost all of the savings delivered by the Hornsdale battery came from its role in frequency and ancillary control markets, where HPR put downward pressure on total prices.

I don't know how often a grid has to deal with short lived surges in demand but a battery responds in seconds where a fossil fueled plant takes minutes.

We all realize one of advantages of solar is that it works when the sun is shining and driving the use of AC but also one of the disadvantages of solar is that peak demand continues on as the sun is going down and after it sets. Obviously, batteries can be used to cover this time. The example stated 300,000 homes for 2 hours but can also be 150,000 homes for 4 hours.

Also, I think it should be noted that the Hornsdale battery also helped to reduce the cost for power during peak demand periods.

Tesla isn't the only supplier of utility scale battery storage and it's not the only way to store electricity, but there has to be good reasons why utility companies all over the world are buying them.

[Finishline42]

2. Background info from the 'Big Battery' (Hornsdale Power Reserve) in Australia

Utility sized battery backup provides a lot of functionality besides just electricity to the grid. This was the one Musk promised would be up and running within 100 days or it would be free.

Revenues from operation
During two days in January 2018 when the wholesale spot price for electricity in South Australia rose due to hot weather, the battery made its owners an estimated A$1,000,000 (US$800,000) as they sold power from the battery to the grid for a price of around A$14,000/MWh.[33] Based on the first six months of operation, the reserve is estimated to earn about A$18 million per year.[34] (This is a third-party estimate, based on spot energy prices; it is possible that the HPR has contracted to provide power at a lower price, in exchange for a more certain income stream.)

After six months of operation, the Hornsdale Power Reserve was responsible for 55% of frequency control and ancillary services in South Australia.[30] The battery usually arbitrages 30 MW or less, but in May 2019 began charging and discharging at around 80 MW and for longer than usual, increasing wind power production by reducing curtailment.[35][36] FCAS is the main source of revenue.[23][37] When the Heywood interconnector failed for 18 days in January 2020, HPR provided grid support while limiting power prices.[38] This event was the main contributor to Neoen's €30 million ($A46.3 million) operating profit from Australian battery storage in 2020.[20]

Benefits for the consumers
By the end of 2018, it was estimated that the Power Reserve had saved A$40 million in costs, mostly in eliminating the need for a fuel-powered 35 MW Frequency Control Ancillary Service.[39] In 2019, grid costs were reduced by $116 million due to the operation of HPR.[40] Almost all of the savings delivered by the Hornsdale battery came from its role in frequency and ancillary control markets, where HPR put downward pressure on total prices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve