On 19/01/2020 12:53, Chris Hogg wrote:
Lots of 'potential' storage solutions, such as compressed air into
underground caverns, trundling very heavy weights on rail tracks up
mountains, Tesla-type batteries everywhere and so on. But none of it
comes near to pumped storage in terms of capacity, and that's very
dependent on the right topography, most of which has already been
used. Those other solutions may be OK for very short term
peak-lopping, but none are capable of storing the amounts of energy
needed to run the country for a several days at this time of year,
when early-evening demand is high, days are short, sun is low (when
there is any), and we get high pressure sitting over Europe, meaning
little or no wind for a few days. And we won't be able to make it up
via the interconnects to the Continent. For a start, there's only a
limited capacity in those interconnects (4GW from the near Continent,
plus another 1.5GW when the Norway interconnect comes on stream; at
peak times on a winter's evening we use around 45GW), and second, they
won't have any juice to spare.

It will be interesting to see how much renewable energy is generated
over the next few days, when the Met Office forecast is for just such
a situation, AIUI.


We will fire up our coal and gas stations and export to France.

As per usual


--
€œA leader is best When people barely know he exists. Of a good leader,
who talks little,When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,They will say,
€œWe did this ourselves.€�

ۥ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching