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United Kingdom Power

Why the UK's Power Grid is Sidelining Clean-Energy Battery Storage (ft.com) 53

Posted by EditorDavid from the power-to-the-people dept.
The administrators of Great Britain's power grid admit that it's often unable to use energy-storage batteries due to old computer systems and an old network with "not enough cables", according to the Financial Times — though the system operator says they're making progress after upgrading their system last December: The company has plans to lower the rate at which batteries are sidelined to single figures by early next year [said Craig Dyke, from National Grid's electricity system operator], calling current levels "higher than where we want them to be". Dyke's comments came in response to a letter from four leading battery storage groups which said National Grid's "electricity system operator" or ESO division was making the country's power costlier and dirtier by failing to use their technology properly. "Consumers are paying more, clean renewable energy is being wasted, and fossil fuel generation is being used instead," they said... depriving them of revenue and undermining investor confidence.
While the U.K. has the world's second-largest offshore wind market, the article notes that when the system operator can't send its power where it's needed, "the ESO pays wind farms in one place to switch off... and can also need to pay gas-fired power plants in another area to turn on. These payments add up to hundreds of millions of pounds each year, and the costs are passed on to household and business energy bills."

"Use of battery storage abroad has soared in places such as California, where batteries soak up solar power during the day and regularly supply a fifth of the state's power in the evening..."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article.

Why the UK's Power Grid is Sidelining Clean-Energy Battery Storage More | Reply

Why the UK's Power Grid is Sidelining Clean-Energy Battery Storage

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  • Slow SlashDotWeekend?

    > can't send its power where it's needed,

    Power isn't "sent". There is a demand for power and power is transmitted. Battiers are on of the sources where stored power can be retriieved.

    What DO those high paid "storage managers" do? They turn on and off things to avoid overloading the grid (see above), causing power plant starvation, etc. They don't actually control PRODUCTION of power, or DISTRIBUTION of power, other than a really gross (as in not-fine) adjustment of how the power

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      To be fair, the UK grid, like most of Western Europe, is very stable. Power outages are rare and only happen due to physical damage to the network, e.g. severe storms or construction accidents.

      We don't have issues like in the US where the grid operator and the generators are to blame for problems.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        Do you live in the UK or another part of Western EU? Have you stayed/visited enough parts of the US to justify your take on the topic or you only rely on reports you get? If so, who provides the reports?

        My experience is that the US grid is on average at least as reliable as the EU one.

      • To be fair, the UK grid, like most of Western Europe, is very stable. Power outages are rare and only happen due to physical damage to the network, e.g. severe storms or construction accidents.

        We don't have issues like in the US where the grid operator and the generators are to blame for problems.

        One of the first problems is trying to compare the UK grid to the US grid.

        When it is a flex to proclaim the superiority of all things Europe and Brexitland, where do you get your reports regarding the failed/failing US power grid?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Well there is the Texas grid, which I accept is a basket case even by US standards. Then there was Enron...

          Looking at historic data though, it does seem that issues related to grid stability (rather than extreme weather or sabotage) are more common in the US.

          • Well there is the Texas grid, which I accept is a basket case even by US standards. Then there was Enron...

            Looking at historic data though, it does seem that issues related to grid stability (rather than extreme weather or sabotage) are more common in the US.

            The Texas grid, as it's name implies is not part of the American grid, but a product of kooks - the Jesus grid or some other tomfoolery. While they shivered and some died in the dark, the states nearby enjoyed uninterrupted electricity.

            Ah yes - Enron. Criminal activity.

            Our grid is huge and despite the propaganda, works pretty well. The difference is probably because if there is a power outage in the USA, it is held up as the failure of our ideology, which is the very base of your Enron/Texas grid as

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              How big do you think the UK is? Because a million without power is a very small fraction...

              That event was due to weather, as I recall. For most people here, power cuts are something that happen once every few decades, if that. The last one here was in the early 2000s and was due to some water people accidentally tripping a breaker that affected around 10 houses. Mine was only half affected - electricity stayed on, but the internet went down as it took out the street cabinet that I was connected to.

  • Privatisation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Sunday September 22, 2024 @04:54AM (#64807105) Homepage

    This is what happens when you privatise basic utlities that are a monopoly. As they have no competition they become more interested in servicing dividend payments and maintaining share price via ever higher charges than improving the the infrastructure they're responsible for. Water companies are another example of this failed model.

    • I will admit that my favorite utilities have always been cooperatives.

    • It is more complicated that just privitisation.

      One solution to the problem they are noting is to put a battery next to where the wind power onshores. And another battery next to the nearby cities.

      Now, as well as having storage for when wind supply varies, you can reduce the requirement on the grid connection; with a big enough batteries at either end, it only needs to cope with the average supply and average demand (which, with luck, are the same), not the peak demand and peak supply.

      Problem is, the nationa

    • I think it is all a bit more complicated than that. They privatised the market here in Belgium. Plenty of players, government forcing high investments to make the grid more dynamic. Penalties for consumers that have a too high peak power consumption. Still plenty of trouble keeping the grid up though. All in a day's work.

      • I think it is all a bit more complicated than that. They privatised the market here in Belgium. Plenty of players, government forcing high investments to make the grid more dynamic. Penalties for consumers that have a too high peak power consumption. Still plenty of trouble keeping the grid up though. All in a day's work.

        An AC Power grid is quite a complicated thing. There is a lot of switching sources to keep it all running and generating power at the right frequency. and turbine generators have to be tightly controlled to avoid loss of load overspin. Batteries are actually a godsend when plumbed into the grid. Someone mentioned them acting as a sort of capacitor. But even if not used to store renewable power, they make a nice method of power response/balancing.

        Not to mention the next step of making wind and solar into

    • This is what happens when you privatize basic utilities that are a monopoly. As they have no competition they become more interested in servicing dividend payments and maintaining share price via ever higher charges than improving the the infrastructure they're responsible for. Water companies are another example of this failed model.

      A common sentiment, and one with zero evidence. The effects of privatization on the energy industry is actually fairly well studied, as we have examples of extremely poorly performing publicly owned utilities being made private (entire nations, municipal utilities, the works) and vice versa where formerly private utilities were bought out or nationalized. There actually isn't any clear pattern of success or failure, nor is there any consistent data indicating private vs public ownership performs vastly bett

  • Battery storage will never scale up to anything more than a few hours' storage to smooth out demand peaks. Even covering a few days of low renewable generation isn't feasible. Case in point, the UK already has Europe's largest grid battery storage facility. It cost £75 million and holds a 98 MWh, enough to power the UK for a few seconds.

    The best way of managing a surplus or deficit of wind energy is via interconnection with other markets, and the UK has a number of those with more in the planning stag

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Battery storage will never scale up to anything more than a few hours' storage to smooth out demand peaks. Even covering a few days of low renewable generation isn't feasible. Case in point, the UK already has Europe's largest grid battery storage facility. It cost £75 million and holds a 98 MWh, enough to power the UK for a few seconds.

      The best way of managing a surplus or deficit of wind energy is via interconnection with other markets, and the UK has a number of those with more in the planning stages.

      Not that long ago battery storage wasn't even supposed to be able to do that. Now batteries "...regularly supply a fifth of the state's [California's] power in the evening...". You must be one of those people whose advice can be used as a reliable barometer for what not to do.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ls671 ( 1122017 )

      Battery storage will never scale up to anything more than a few hours' storage to smooth out demand peaks. Even covering a few days of low renewable generation isn't feasible. Case in point, the UK already has Europe's largest grid battery storage facility. It cost £75 million and holds a 98 MWh, enough to power the UK for a few seconds.

      The best way of managing a surplus or deficit of wind energy is via interconnection with other markets, and the UK has a number of those with more in the planning stages.

      Thanks for that, I can clearly see you see clearly :)

    • The question is how much storage do we need? It would be expensive to power the UK for days on end while all renewable power is switched off, just using batteries alone. But, we don't need that. Wind and solar do not behave like that anyway, but in addition we have nuclear (with HPC coming onstream soon), plus pumped and unpumped hydro.

      Add in a couple of percentage of tidal. Repurpose the nat gas facilities into green hydrogen for seasonal storage, with some seasonal thermal storage for the few places we ca

      • And, yes, as you note, that is before interconnect. The UK has multiple GW interconnect already and more coming.

      • Wind and solar do not behave like that

        They absolutely do. Solar output drops to almost nothing in the UK winter, my own panels are testament to that. As for wind, the entire British Isles can suffer from becalment for weeks at a time. The Germans even have a word for it: Dunkelflaute. No amount of storage, whether battery, hydro or whatever is going to see the grid through such a period.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dvice ( 6309704 )

      I think iron-air battery will be so cost effective that the only upper limit is from the technology, which is 3 days. Of course making enough batteries to last for 3 days to cover all electricity usage on the USA would be a massive project, required hundreds of thousands of factories, which makes it unlikely to happen, but it would still be possible, if we just wanted to do it.

      > The best way of managing a surplus or deficit of wind energy is via interconnection with other markets

      I agree to some extend.

      • I think iron-air battery will be so cost effective that the only upper limit is from the technology, which is 3 days. Of course making enough batteries to last for 3 days to cover all electricity usage on the USA would be a massive project, required hundreds of thousands of factories, which makes it unlikely to happen, but it would still be possible, if we just wanted to do it.

        > The best way of managing a surplus or deficit of wind energy is via interconnection with other markets

        I agree to some extend. Problem is price difference between those markets. When you connect two markets well enough, the price on those markets will balance out. This means that it will create losers and winners. Those who are about to lose money, will most likely be against it.

        I'm a fan of Nickel-Iron batteries, but we're in the same neighborhood.

        Chemistry and development are the keys. Whether from old school Carbon/Zinc to the air batteries to Lithium to sodium. All pretty basic chemistry, so it's the development controlling things.

        You want toughness, the ability to withstand abuse. You want low cost and durability. You want the battery banks to have storage capacity for likely outages. There are a lot of potential (hehe) candidates, so pick a few and see what shakes out.

  • Self-crediting? (Score:3)

    by Corbets ( 169101 ) on Sunday September 22, 2024 @07:08AM (#64807253) Homepage

    Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the article.

    Since it also says that you posted it, did you really need to thank yourself for it too?

  • Ideally, battery storage should be in close proximity to solar, the solar can dump excess into batteries when demand is less than the electricity being generated, then later in the day, when the sun is beginning to go down, the battery can top up the power being fed in. That way the battery size doesn’t need to be too big, but helps even out and extend the generation window for solar. Battery storage isn’t really a viable solution to replace solar at night to cover the base load, that simply req

  • There's no money for anything.

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