Europe's Biggest Battery Powered Up In Scotland (zenobe.com) 48
AmiMoJo shares a report: Europe's biggest battery storage project has entered commercial operation in Scotland [alternative source], promising to soak up surplus wind power and prevent turbines being paid to switch off.
Zenobe said the first phase of its project at Blackhillock, between Inverness and Aberdeen, was now live with capacity to store enough power to supply 200 megawatts of electricity for two hours. It is due to be expanded to 300 megawatts by next year, enough to supply 3.1 million homes, more than every household in Scotland.
The government's Clean Power 2030 action plan sets a target capacity of up to 27 gigawatts of batteries by 2030, a sixfold increase from the 4.5 gigawatts installed today. This huge expansion is seen as critical as Britain builds more renewable wind and solar power, since batteries can store surplus generation for use when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.
Zenobe said the first phase of its project at Blackhillock, between Inverness and Aberdeen, was now live with capacity to store enough power to supply 200 megawatts of electricity for two hours. It is due to be expanded to 300 megawatts by next year, enough to supply 3.1 million homes, more than every household in Scotland.
The government's Clean Power 2030 action plan sets a target capacity of up to 27 gigawatts of batteries by 2030, a sixfold increase from the 4.5 gigawatts installed today. This huge expansion is seen as critical as Britain builds more renewable wind and solar power, since batteries can store surplus generation for use when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.
200 Megawatts for 2 hours? (Score:2)
Re:200 Megawatts for 2 hours? (Score:5, Informative)
The maximum discharge rate to 200MW. It can provide that for two hours, so has 400MWh of storage.
Or maybe more, it's not clear if it is 400MWh usable or gross capacity.
Either way, it's a very big battery. Whole country UPS size.
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Big enough to support one OpenAI Datacenter (barely)
Re: 200 Megawatts for 2 hours? (Score:3)
Or is the 2 hour unit significant in some way?
Maybe. It could specify the maximum discharge rate.
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I think they took the average energy consumption of a UK home and simply divided 300M by it.
I don't know where you got 10 minutes from, that would be implied to be for two hours.
Not that it will ever be used that way. As well as helping smooth renewable sources, it also gives other sources plenty of time to ramp up, and avoids them ramping up for short periods. It replaces spinning reserve too, which is needed in case one generator goes offline without warning.
Re:200 Megawatts for 2 hours? (Score:5, Informative)
Is 200 Megawatts for 2 hours the same as 400 Megawatt Hours? Or is the 2 hour unit significant in some way?
200 MW is the power. 2 hours is the duration.
200 MW times 2 hours is the capacity, 400 MW-hr.
Power, duration and capacity are all important.
Not Even Largest in Scotland (Score:4, Informative)
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The total amount of power a battery can provide depends on the rate at which it provides power. In other words, 200mw for 2 hours is not the equivalent of 100mw for 4 hours. The battery will be able to provide 100mw for more than 4 hours.
When anyone uses MW as a measure of battery capacity they likely don't know what they are talking about. Unless they are a grid operator talking about the rate the battery can provide power to the grid at a moment in time. Battery storage is always measured as a combinatio
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When anyone uses MW as a measure of battery capacity they likely don't know what they are talking about
...unless they also include the discharge duration, e.g., 200 MW for 2 hours.
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Exactly. So what does this mean?
The government's Clean Power 2030 action plan sets a target capacity of up to 27 gigawatts of batteries by 2030, a sixfold increase from the 4.5 gigawatts installed today.
Unless they are a grid operator (Score:2)
Megawatts is a measure of power not energy (Score:1)
It appears that the PR department doesn't employ people with any science knowledge.
Re: Megawatts is a measure of power not energy (Score:2)
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People don't write in engineering or physics terms, although that would be a good thing for clarity. Natural language has a feature called "metonymy" where things are referred to by adjuncts or other things associated by it. Managers are called "suits"; monarchs and their governments are called "the crown"; "Wall Street" is used to refer to the financial markets.
People commonly refer to electric service as "power". This doesn't convey the precise meaning that engineering terminology, but nobody is misled
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The article messed up more in the following paragraphs. But still decipherable, which is a nice departure from the usual screw up.
Scotts don't use much power (Score:1)
300 mega Watts for 3.1 million homes is less than 100 Watts per home. I guess that no one is charging an EV at night.
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For ten minutes. Yet anoter reporter over his head in science.
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For ten minutes. Yet anoter reporter over his head in science.
Hmmm.
One of you throws out a misleading ‘no one can charge their EV’ line, and the other follows up with some absurd, cooked-up ‘10 minutes per home’ nonsense. That 10 minute number you came up with only works if one assumes every single home in Scotland is charging an EV at the same time—and only with a low-power Level 1 charger, an absolutely ludicrous assumption. This battery will do exactly what it's designed to do -- store wind energy that would otherwise be wasted. But
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300 mega Watts for 3.1 million homes is less than 100 Watts per home. I guess that no one is charging an EV at night.
That’s an odd way to look at it. You seem to be implying that this battery is supposed to discharge all its stored energy across all of Scotland at once, which is not how grid-scale storage works. Its purpose is to absorb excess wind power that would otherwise go to waste and release it when demand is higher. Are you just confused, or are you trying to make storage sound useless when it’s actually a crucial part of decarbonizing the grid?
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Quote:
"It is due to be expanded to 300 megawatts by next year, enough to supply 3.1 million homes, more than every household in Scotland."
If 300 megawatts can supply 3.1 million homes, that is less than 100 watts per home on average. There is no confusion on my part, and I was not in any way commenting on the need for storage. I don't know why you would think that I was. Perhaps you are confused. I was commenting on a statement that seems to me to make no sense.
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So you have a hard time with conceptualizing analogous measurement for laymen with designed purpose. Got it.
They didn't build this to power the whole country for 10 minutes. They built it to store excess generation to supplement spot power demand while also having the inherent capacity to grid stabilize that batteries provide.
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And what does that have anything to do with me pointing out that the statement is nonsense?
Where in that statement did you read anything about grid stabilization?
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Grid stabilization is an inherent property of a reserve of power that can be drawn on with microsecond latency, otherwise known as a really big array of batteries. That's the whole god damn purpose of building it.
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And you all thought ... (Score:3)
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Thank god a gasoline fire can be put out with a good strong pee.
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Thank god a gasoline fire can be put out with a good strong pee.
Please try it and get back to us with the results.
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It's been done; there's even a documentary [imdb.com].
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Thank god a gasoline fire can be put out
Been there, done that. With a cheapo fire extinguisher. Fixed a broken fuel line and drove off. Drove the car for a few years after that.
They left this out on purpose (Score:3)
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Man, it's a good thing you came along to tell them all of this, because apparently in your view no actual electrical engineers on the project could anticipate any of that.
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I think that would be a poor bet.
They can control the charge rate, discharge rate and depth of discharge precisely, and they have heaters and ventilation to control the temperature. No refrigeration/AC for when the air temperature gets too hot, but it's Scotland. They can't even charge faster than 0.5C. They should be able to get optimal lifespan out of the cells.
Also, "usable life" is usually given as something like the time for the cell to drop to ~80% of its original capacity, but grid battery storage ca
Only have to build it due to renewables. (Score:2)
We have to keep adding these costs to the production cost of solar, batteries last 20+ years, Pumped storage, 100+ years.
https://www.euronews.com/green... [euronews.com]
Building a solar or wind project needs a storage project attached or we will never know what things cost. For the absolute
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I believe batteries and nuclear power go great together since nuclear power plants like to be run at a constant rate to avoid wear and to maximize output. Thermal energy storage on next generation nuclear power plants would likely be less expensive due to being more efficient but batteries will be great for a net zero carbon transition while the UK develops these next generation nuclear fission reactors.
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What's typical Scottish household usage? (Score:2)
"300 megawatts by next year, enough to supply 3.1 million homes, more than every household in Scotland"
So, that's a average of 97 Watts per household. Is that really sufficient or typical in Scotland? My family uses an average of 1.2 kW, and before charging two electric cars, it was about 500 W. But that's averaged over 24 hours in a day. The huge battery is most useful in providing extra power during peak usage times, so the target should be even higher than the average.
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So you are saying that this battery is expected to keep the entire country running in the event of a total grid collapse?
Don't you think that might be a little beyond the intended usage, and that this might be for the intended purpose of storing excess offshore wind generation for demand peaking while spinning up spot generation? I.e. exactly what these things are always installed for: grid stability?
Do you think that electrical engineers working on such a project can't do that simple math? Or maybe the w
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Should be 396 W per household (annualized instantaneous consumption), using the following data: 8694 GWh domestic electricity consumption in 2023 https://www.gov.scot/publicati... [gov.scot] divided by 2.5 million households https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/... [nrscotland.gov.uk]
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That's apparently not what that line is saying. They explain how they calculate it in the article:
Central Europe dummy loads (Score:1)
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