back to article Dirty diesel backups will make Hinkley Point C look like a bargain

Britain signed off on the most costly energy deal it has ever made this week – but the price we agreed for energy from Hinckley is still lower than the peak prices that will hit British wallets even harder, and sooner. Current commitments to renewable generation will cost each household £466 by 2020/21, the centre-right think …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm OK - all of my electricity comes out of a box on the wall

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      zero carbon means a significant amount of nuclear

      Even as a US liberal (so probably European moderate) I have to admit we aren't going zero carbon without nuclear (maybe fusion if we get incredibly lucky). The numbers just don't add up. Not a real big fan of creating waste that can kill life millions of years from now but considering we are looking at a second degree Celsius increase by 2050 (already at one) even with Paris agreements, zero carbon energy (at least in the developed world) is going to happen (along with probably mandated zero emission transportation). The human climate change denial much like the tobacco companies tactics will only work for so long as will building gas plants today.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: zero carbon means a significant amount of nuclear

        And one of the two main candidates for the US Presidency is a climate change denier.

        I'll leave it to you to decide which.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: one of the two main candidates for the US Presidency is a climate change denier.

          That will be the Clitorall Hinny then.

          In denial of the science that shows that climate changes independently of atmospheric CO2 levels, which have minimal effect.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: one of the two main candidates for the US Presidency is a climate change denier.

            >climate changes independently of atmospheric CO2 levels, which have minimal effect.

            And smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. Same tactics but I guess if you have a vested interest or ideology why not go with the proven stall playbook.

          2. Vendicar Decarian1

            Re: one of the two main candidates for the US Presidency is a climate change denier.

            Meanwhile the Earth is now warmer than at any time in the last 120,000 years.

            Hillary Clinton is not a fool denialist.

            Republican cowards often feel a need to lie about such things.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not a real big fan of creating waste that can kill life millions of years from now

        Well dont leave any CFL lamps around. Mercury kills forever.

        1. Vendicar Decarian1

          Re: Not a real big fan of creating waste that can kill life millions of years from now

          You do realize don't you that all those large tubular florescent bulbs in office buildings - the trillions of them out there, in every business in the world contain 20 times more mercury than any CF bulb.

          In addition if the energy used to power the CF bulb comes from coal, less mercury will enter the environment with the CF bulb than will be released into the environment by burning the coal needed to power a conventional bulb replacement.

      3. Phil.T.Tipp

        Re: zero carbon means a significant amount of nuclear

        "..considering we are looking at a second degree Celsius increase by 2050 (already at one)"

        Bollocks. Fact-free anti-science. Cast-iron sources or it's simple-minded regurgitation of ideology. Over to you.

        1. Vendicar Decarian1

          Re: zero carbon means a significant amount of nuclear

          "Bollocks. Fact-free anti-science." - Phil.T.Tripp

          Hmm. I suspect that climate scientists know a bit more about climate than Phil.T.Tripp.

          A team of top scientists is telling world leaders to stop congratulating themselves on the Paris agreement to fight climate change because if more isn't done, global temperatures will likely hit dangerous warming levels in about 35 years.

          Six scientists who were leaders in past international climate conferences joined with the Universal Ecological Fund in Argentina to release a brief report Thursday, saying that if even more cuts in heat-trapping gases aren't agreed upon soon, the world will warm by another 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) by around 2050.

          http://phys.org/news/2016-09-scientists-world-wont-dangerous.html#jCp

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: zero carbon means a significant amount of nuclear

          What constitutes a cast-iron source in this case? Because if what you're really saying is "there is no source that I will consider strong enough unless it confirms my existing beliefs" that would make your post a false invitation, but your requirement for "cast iron" predictions of future events does imply the traditional misapprehension of the scientific method prevalent among creationist ideologues. It's fine to be one of those - you're not going to stop progress in the long run, even if you are contributing to a cruel legacy for which our diminished future generations will judge you harshly - but if you are, why hide behind faux-socratic questioning?

          You might claim that you are susceptible to persuasion, but if you can look at the existing evidence and choose to ignore it, then you're already deep into that triangle of Backfire Effect, Confirmation Bias and Dunning-Kruger and nothing is going to change your mind unless you are able to let go of your preconceptions so you can learn and understand the existing science, Most people aren't able to do that and it doesn't really matter- our voices are noise on the digital wind and that is probably for the best because most of use know almost nothing about almost everything and in consequence we are making words with nothing behind them but conceit and ideology. Nothing but our ideas of how the world is supposed to be and no matter how pleasant they are those ideas could not have less bearing on the laws of physics or the way that moisture behaves in an atmosphere.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

    When the signing of the Hinkley C deal was announced, some Green Party mouth piece was banging on how we should be investing in research into renewables rather than building a new power station - "we could be world leaders in renewables!!" he cried.

    Ok, fair point. With sufficient research we could be, but until then (and who knows how many years/decades that would take) how would we keep lights on?

    Due to pandering to the Greens, we are now in the situation where we have no real choice but to sign this deal. Money that could have been spent developing low emission gas power has been wasted on solar/wind subsidies. The only people to have benefited from this are those who run wind farms etc.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

      we are now in the situation where we have no real choice but to sign this deal.

      Oh, we did have a choice. The answer is more CCGT if you want low cost, if you're a mouth-frothing carbonista, determined that CO2 is the source of all evil, then the answer is indeed nuclear, just not the Areva EPR.

      Much of the prep work at Hiinkley Point could have been reused for a couple of KEPCO APR1400. The APR1400 is proven to work, they're much cheaper than the Areva EPR, and even with the late start would probably be built quicker than the Areva plant.

      And even with Hinkley Point C getting an unjustified sign off by idiot politicians, they are proposing to allow both Nugen(Westinghouse AP1000) and Horizon (Hitatchi ABWR) to build new nuclear plants to totally different designs. So we'll be paying for three different designs, multiple safety reviews, losing any economies of scale. All of this sad, motley nuclear fleet will be owned by foreign investors, all the IP, design and most high value plant will be foreign, all will need to be handsome subsidised out of your electricity bills, and all are being built miles and miles from any demand centre, so guaranteeing that the low grade heat will be just waste energy, and the transmission losses will be maximised.

      All because our politicians and civil servants are a collection of unredeemed eco-obsessed fuckwits.

      1. Killing Time

        Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

        'All because our politicians and civil servants are a collection of unredeemed eco-obsessed fuckwits.'

        As much as I would like to agree there is a valid argument that we don't put all our eggs in one basket.

        This means varying the fuel between gas, nuclear, wind and solar. The Seventies saw the country brought to its knees by an over reliance on one fuel i.e. coal.

        That same argument can be applied to the generation technology, therefore multiple reactor designs spread the risk of a common design fault knocking out a large percentage of our generating capacity. There are three or four different manufacturers of Power Gas Turbines in the world ( foreign IP ) and the generating companies source from all of them for service in the UK precisely to hedge their risk, the same can be said for wind and solar.

        For a national infrastructure of such importance I find it difficult to argue against that approach as long as the percentage of each technology and costs are controlled, and there is the rub, as we are all paying for it via the capacity market and strike price each technology achieves.

        Personally I disagree with the diesel standby market which has come about and believe it should be replaced with additional gas capacity due to it's far more manageable emissions.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

        I remember when I was looking to go to university I applied for a sponsorship place by BNFL. That was in the days where the UK had genuine leading edge nuclear technology. Shames me that we now have to pander to others to get things done.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

          "I remember when I was looking to go to university I applied for a sponsorship place by BNFL."

          Yes, when I was at school the 6th form physics lab had all the exciting stuff - the little sources in their lead lined box, the klystron, Van der Graaff, and the little project I did after Cambridge entrance that involved separation of the uranium decomposition products and measuring the half lives. The assumption was that we would all become good little nuclear physicists. As far as I'm aware none of us did.

          The truth is that successive British governments seem to be unable to make their minds up on anything that requires long term investment, and the word gets round pretty quick.

    2. Commswonk

      Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

      some Green Party mouth piece was banging on how we should be investing in research into renewables rather than building a new power station - "we could be world leaders in renewables!!" he cried.

      Ok, fair point.

      I don't think it is a "fair point". The Greens are very good at agitating from the sidelines but how many of them are actively engaged in developing "renewables"? They are very good at being noisy but when it comes to the reality of providing a reliable source of a domestic and business energy supply I strongly suspect that they simply haven't a clue.

      IMHO there ought to be special hospitals where Green Enthusiasts are treated; operating theatres where if the power suddenly drops the operation stops and the patient, er, dies. Ward heating would, of course, be permanently unavailable.

      They might feel very righteous about their stance about I don't think that they have thought it through to its logical end-point.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

        "The Greens are very good at agitating from the sidelines but how many of them are actively engaged in developing "renewables"?"

        How many of them actually understand energy generation sufficiently to make an intelligent comment?

        Mind you, some years ago I'm afraid I let rip at one of them when he asserted that nuclear was unsafe because H&SE would turn a blind eye to any problems. I'm afraid I told him that I had probably met more actual people from H&SE than he ever would, and insulting hard working people on no evidence was not on. At that point I realised it's all imaginary in their heads - stuff they've read, not things they've experienced, and often seeing a tiny part of the overall picture and seeing it through distorting glasses.

        I'm extremely worried about climate change, and air, soil and water pollution. I am also no politician (partly due to an actual physical handicap.) But I detest the Greens because they seem to be trying to fix the problems by a kind of cargo cult religion - tinker here, protest there - instead of funding some serious people to do some independent work with some real scientific credibility.

        1. PT
          Mushroom

          Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

          "How many of them [the Greens] actually understand energy generation sufficiently to make an intelligent comment?"

          How many of them are interested? The hard core of Greens want to destroy industrial civilization and restore a medieval agrarian subsistence economy. It seems to me they've made a good start in Britain, with the help of the EU and brain dead politicians. "Department for Energy and Climate Change" - no conflict of interest there, I'm sure.

        2. Triggerfish

          Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

          "The Greens are very good at agitating from the sidelines but how many of them are actively engaged in developing "renewables"?"

          How many of them actually understand energy generation sufficiently to make an intelligent comment?

          Some I guess but drowned out by the shouters, who probably don't want to listen to them being realistic.

          Heard all this sort of thing before, a recent conversation about farming, which went along the lines of "something needs to be done about farming", but when you ask about it all it was is a facebook post a sense there are some issues and actually no real understanindg of them. When I pressed said person all they could reiterate was the issue about farming needing something done, not even a clue about what it was that needed to be done in any more specifri form than that.

          They tend to get irritated when you ask questions that drill down into a subject like you are trying to make them look like an idiot. I ask why do I need to try?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

      "we could be world leaders in renewables!!" he cried...

      Ok, fair point. With sufficient research we could be...

      Just remember what happened to South Australia where too much renewables destabilised the grid and caused a state wide blackout.

      The Germans discovered that much over 15% renewable energy caused big problems a few years ago. Yet the eco-greens will never learn the maxim that renewables can not supply base load.

      1. 42

        Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

        Nope, tornadoes from a supercell storm blew down 23 275kv pylons that caused the SA failiure, sorry to bust your denialist bubble.

    4. MR J

      Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

      Personally I think Hink C was the wrong move, at least on its own and now.

      The way these projects run I doubt we will see any generation until at least 2030, as the story points out we are out of juice now!. The greens are correct in stating that we should be researching "clean" energy, but by no means will that cover the UK or any other large nation in any respectable time.

      Fusion research would have been the way to go, 20 years ago.. Fission reactors should have been built over the past 10 years to increase the base capacity.

      Smart Grids should have been designed with the subsidy for Solar PV, and Wind Turbines. There should have been requirements to feed indirectly into the grid using battery systems that would provide a small buffer in the storage. It is my understanding that many Wind systems now actually store the power and deploy it on demand.

      Renewables and Clean energy is not the devil here. The devil is that plans should have been going on 10 or 20 years ago to deal with today. Today it is here and now someone is forced to deal with it.

      Bear in mind that "Natural Gas" power stations here were viewed as a great thing, and "Fracking" was going to come along and save the UK. The thing is that "Fracking" in the USA and Canada see's the owners of the land "generally" the "Royalties" from the product. In the UK it goes to the "Royal" people. The great economic "Boom" wouldn't go along with it, consumers wouldn't pass money back into that system. So while they could be a good or great thing, gas for them would need to be imported.

      I have solar panels, and I do benefit from "everyone" who has to buy electricity. The price I am paid for it is around 50p per KWH, that is a lot less than the strike price for HinkC, and new solar installs are perhaps only 1/5th of what mine is... What all of these systems need is storage - then they become really useful. My solar panels probably add somewhere around 0.6% additional cost to the UK bill (Including my own bill!). So Solar and Wind subsidies have increased your bill by less than 1%, but HinkC will cost you a good bit more than that - If it ever gets built!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

        "Fusion research would have been the way to go, 20 years ago"

        I agree we should have been expanding fission capacity, but fusion? There are very, very few nuclei that can be used for a fusion reactor - basically hydrogens 1, 2 and 3 and helium - and the technical problems are very large indeed and well known. At the moment there is simply no approach that has a good chance of being remotely economic compared to fission, in at least a 20 year timescale, and in fact the main approach being explored is a fusion - fission reactor with a uranium blanket for the neutrons, and a bad case of tritium deficit. Fusion research is a story of running into walls - and yes, that's a deliberate comment.

        Established fission designs still find the odd new and exciting way to go wrong. Look at how long it took to develop satisfactory steam boilers in the 18th and 19th century; so many technologies have to advance before some improvements can occur that it involves more or less the entire R&D resources of civilisation.

        For the next fifty years or so improving fission as a baseload generator alongside renewables and gas seems to me to be the best way to keep the lights on so that we do have a civilisation able to use fusion, if it ever happens.

      2. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

        Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

        > I have solar panels, and I do benefit from "everyone" who has to buy electricity.

        And therein lies the rub. You are, to put it mildly, "well off" - you'd have to be to be able to afford the system. Or as a relative put it when ordering his, "if they're offering free money, I'll have some of that".

        But your panels are part of the problem, and that you only include the FIT that you get in the economics is also part of the problem - it's the same "sleight of hand" the windmill apologists use.

        The article is fairly well balanced actually - and makes the point that when your panels are in bright sunshine, something else (mostly OCGT) must "close the taps" a little; conversely, when the sun goes down or a cloud goes over, something elsewhere must "open the taps" a little.

        So when you are generating, you are taking away income from an operator of a gas turbine - but that same operator is expected to be there to cover for when you can't supply anything. In addition, by having to start and stop more frequently, and ramp up output quite a lot at times, the wear and tear on the equipment is much higher which puts the running costs up at the same time as his total output is reduced - double whammy for increased per-unit lecky costs. Question for you, how much contribution do your panels make to the evening peak, on one of those cold dark, windless winter evenings when (in Dec 2010) we came very close to running out of reserve ? Answer - SFA !

        So the true cost of your panels is not the FIT you see (or the ROCs for windmills), it also includes the higher per-unit cost of the lecky produced by the gas turbine operator, and the availability payments made to them to persuade them to stay open. That is a significant cost - and one that both the wind and sunshine lobbies are very quiet on, to the extent that you could call it being dishonest. And for those infrequent, but real, periods when demand is really high and renewables really do produce SFA - we end up with diesel because the capital is cheap, and they can sit around for long periods doing nothing but wait for them to be needed.

        And don't expect France to save us via the cross channel interconnector. At the same time as we are in the dark, so will most of Europe, all having to import power from those countries still able to produce something. So Germany will be importing from Poland where they burn a lot of coal. Everyone will be hoping that France has some of it's nuclear power to spare, but generally will all have our gas turbines run up to max - and fingers crossed that nothing trips out.

        Of course, give it a few more years and that latter situation will be dealt with - those (so called) "smart" meters are primarily there to allow for more fine grained rolling blackouts. As a kid we thought it was fun in the 70s - I don't think we would now with our much higher reliance on lecky.

        BTW - I'm changing my consumer unit soon, and while I'm at it I'll be adding a generator input facility (then these green policies can result in my running a small and definitely non-green petrol genny to keep the lights on).

    5. itzman

      Re: we could be world leaders in renewables..

      Why ever would we want to be?

      That's a bit like wanting to be the first lemming over the cliff..

    6. Vendicar Decarian1

      Re: Heads in the cloud or so far up their...

      "Ok, fair point. With sufficient research we could be," - Coward.

      You are two decades too late.

      China is the world leader in renewable power, and will remain on top for the rest of your, and your children's lives.

      Denial of reality has economic costs.

  3. PyLETS
    FAIL

    "A winter in which the wind doesn't blow"

    That seems a less probable apocalypse theory than a tsunami in the Bristol Channel submerging Hinkley Point. Windless during winter for a few days is likely, making P2G use of the gas grid for electricity storage likely to be needed to avoid the rather more than the £466/household cost/household in climate change externalities, particularly if your house is at risk of flooding.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Channel_floods,_1607

    As to lights going out scare stories being used to try to jump start rusty agendas, seen this all before.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "A winter in which the wind doesn't blow"

      Unfortunately, it's quite common for the the whole of Europe to suffer week long (or longer) still periods when a high pressure parks itself over Europe in the depths of a very cold spell. This happened a few years ago (I remember it never went above freezing where we are for a couple of weeks) and will happen again.

      Have a look at http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ and you'll see that there have been quite a few times in the past year where wind has contributed just about nothing over the whole of the UK.

      Remember last year (I think) when the greens harped on about wind producing more than Nuclear for a day? They failed to mention that was because it was very windy over the whole UK and there were a lot of nuclear plants off line at the same time for maintenance (they go off grid about once every three years). They also never mention when nuclear is producing 20 times what wind is...

      1. Mark 65

        Re: "A winter in which the wind doesn't blow"

        @AC: How dare you come in here touting your anti-wind agenda with cold hard facts. Heresy says I. If you didn't read it on a frothing greenist blog it didn't happen.

        If the world wants low carbon then we are looking at a mix of nuclear, gas, and renewables else it isn't going to happen.

      2. Vic

        Re: "A winter in which the wind doesn't blow"

        They failed to mention that was because it was very windy over the whole UK

        For wind to work, it needs not to be "very windy", but rather "suitably windy".

        If the wind gets too strong, the blades get feathered and the turbines shut down...

        Vic.

  4. smartypants

    Storage as a service

    ... Is the missing piece of the story here.

    We still lack a cheap way to smooth out the difference between varying supply and demand over days.

    For renewables to be the future, this needs to be sorted,but I don't see anything on the horizon that will solve this problem at scale in the next decade.

    Perhaps some sort of 'national Elastic band' stretched between John o'groats and lands end which gets twisted when it's windy and untwists when calm.

    1. Martin an gof Silver badge

      Re: Storage as a service

      For short-ish term use, pumped storage is still I believe the best option in the UK, and I'm sure there are plenty of places suitable for use. I have a document somewhere which was issued when they propsed building Dinorwic power station which also proposed a second site on (IIRC) Exmoor, or perhaps it was Dartmoor. It wasn't built because it wasn't needed; at the time we had all the base load covered by coal and nuclear, and Dinorwic's fast response was enough to tide the system over until gas plant could spool up.

      Dinorwic is by far the largest of its kind in the UK and there a loads of much smaller schemes (for example, just up the road from Dinorwic at Ffestiniog, but surely we have plenty of options in the hilly parts of the country for more large stations to be built? It's not even as if they need be unsightly.

      Why doesn't anyone talk about pumped storage any more? It seems to me to be the perfect way of smoothing the output from wind and sun.

      M.

      1. Floydian Slip

        Re: Storage as a service

        I used to really like the concept of pumped storage but apparently there's a hidden problem - methane, which is a significantly worse greenhouse gas than CO2.

        And pumped storage systems generate much more methane than originally believed simply because the more stagnant nature of the water leads to increased decomposition. Wish I could remember where I read the report earlier this week but the source escapes me

      2. smartypants

        Re: Storage as a service

        I'll have to dig it out another time, but I remember reading that Dinorwig is only really useful for short term spikes like everyone rushing for the kettle. To be able to run with renewables alone, ideally we'd need to store many days of a significant percentage of total demand... A different scale altogether.

      3. Todge

        Re: Storage as a service

        I read a paper somewhere that in order to supply the UK's power needs for a week in winter you would need a pumped storage scheme the size of Wales.

    2. Rich 11

      Re: Storage as a service

      No, there isn't a solution at scale in the next decade. There are many different research projects underway, but as usual we started funding this far too late.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Storage as a service

        as usual we started funding this far too late

        Ah, magic Lefty thinking. If we simply pour money into venal green technology it will somehow magically produce the desired result, even when the laws of physics show its theoretically impossible, and the laws of engineering show its outrageously expensive by its very nature

        There is a very good reason why no one poured money into large scale storage, and that's because it cant be made to work at the price, and no one was subsidising it. No one would have poured money into solar panels and windmills either, if they hadn't been carried away by carefully crafted eco-porn and other commercial propaganda.

        And the nation would be in a far far better place if no one had.

        1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

          Re: Storage as a service

          "... even when the laws of physics show its theoretically impossible, and the laws of engineering show its outrageously expensive by its very nature ...

          I'm quite positive that when the physicists prove that it's impossible, us engineers wouldn't bother trying to build it.

          So what is it, actually impossible or just very, very expensive?

    3. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      Energy Storage

      Lightsail Energy (http://www.lightsail.com/) has a scheme to store large amounts of energy in compressed air.

      Their ingenious twist is that the heat of compression is extracted and is also stored (as opposed to being wasted). This stored heat energy is later re-injected when the compressed air is decompressed (when it naturally cools, due to PV=nRT of course). This re-heating of the air helps it to expand, making the whole process far more efficient.

      Presented for consideration.

      PS. It's worth clicking to the team and reading up on Dr. Danielle Fong. She began university at 12, began her PhD at age 17. Etc. Very impressive. I believe that I've seen her, years ago, at her family's restaurant, sitting at a table, doing her homework, when she was a little kid. I didn't know it at the time, but the kid's homework was probably advanced calculus. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Fong)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Energy Storage

        Lightsail Energy (http://www.lightsail.com/) has a scheme to store large amounts of energy in compressed air.

        Speaking as an employee of foreign owned Big 6 energy retailer, I'd like to report that we invested in research into this in my company's home country years ago. We have working grid scale plants NOW. The problem is that they simply aren't viable when you add through the cost of construction, utilisation rates, and the multiple losses that you incur across each conversion stage. End to end efficiency is about 65% in the real world, so you throw away a third of the energy you put in (and that won't change unless you can recover low grade adiabatic losses plus the inherent conversion losses at each stage, which seems unlikely). And how often will this plant be cycled?

        That's the Achille's heel of all storage. If you can cycle daily, you get 365 cycles per year for your capital investment. If you cycle every other day that's halved, and your capital costs DOUBLE. Now consider wind energy storage that might cycle completely 52 times a year. Your capital costs have quadrupled...and so forth.

        Now, storage works great for short term peaks (where costs are irrelevant and performance counts, as in the recent National Grid EFR auction, though costs were well below expectations). And it works brilliantly if you can cycle daily. But for inter-week, month or seasonal storage, the only storage that makes sense is chemical storage, and that has too low efficiency end to end. And, again, my employers have spent many millions proving that point.

        In so many ways I'm immensely proud of my employers. And then I look at their fuckwitted commercial management, risk aversion, total absence of leadership top to bottom, and I'm so bloody angry.

        It's the big red one, by the way. AC for obvious reasons.

        1. JeffyPoooh
          Pint

          Re: Energy Storage

          AC "...End to end efficiency is about 65% in the real world..."

          Was that 65% *with* the extraction and separate storage of the heat of compression as per Lightsail?

          Or without?

          I didn't think that their concept had yet been commercialized. So if not, then the 65% is the 'before' figure and the 'after' (implementing heat storage) will be much better.

          Yes, capital cost matters.

          Plus, the total footprint should be compared to natural gas turbines. It'd be silly to have a 'renewable' scheme that actually has a larger total footprint than just burning a wee bit of gas once in a while.

          Pragmatism is essential. 'Renewables as a religion' should now be a capital offense.

          1. Commswonk

            Re: Energy Storage

            'Renewables as a religion' should now be a capital offense.

            That got you my upvote.

    4. Crazy Operations Guy

      Re: Storage as a service

      Wind farm being used to power a pumped-storage hydro station would work pretty well.

      I've also seen projects where a wind generator is hooked up to a miniaturized electrolysis-based hydrogen/oxygen generator. The collected gases are then burned in a fuel cell or in a regular boiler for a power station.

      Wind is much like a waiter at a restaurant, always there when you need them the least and never there when you actually need them.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Storage as a service

      WOULD be the answer if there were any technology remotely capable of providing it.

      AS it is, take a useless technology like intermittent renewable energy, then treble its cost by constructing massively underutilised interconnectors, and storage units everywhere, and you call that a success?

      Renewable energy is already far more expensive than the most overpriced and bloated nuclear project, so we should add to its expense to ameliorate its fundamentally flawed nature?

      I have a turd for you to polish.

  5. Richard Wharram

    Greens just don't understand numbers

    Build more storage, they cry

    What storage, is the reply

    Duh. Pushing water uphill. Look it's already done all over the world, they retort

    Someone crunches the numbers and finds that Britain would need 390 more Dinorwigs which don't actually exist so it would require large quantities of dynamite and the biggest structural engineering project in the history of the world...

    Ah, but, never mind that, can we just talk about how wind and solar are a bit cheaper than nuclear in some countries again please?

    1. Martin an gof Silver badge

      Re: Greens just don't understand numbers

      Sorry, I hadn't seen yours when I posted mine, and I'll admit I posted mine without considering the real numbers...

      Someone crunches the numbers and finds that Britain would need 390 more Dinorwigs

      Interesting point. I believe Dinorwig is capable of 1.3GW for five hours? I also believe there's a total of about 13GW installed wind capacity in the UK, so logically you'd need 10 Dinorwigs to replace a complete loss of wind for up to five hours, or 50 to do so for a whole day. Your 390 stations could power the country for about a windless week.

      It still strikes me as a better storage plan than anything else that's been proposed, but I have to admit here that I'm totally in favour of a few more nuclear stations.

      Dinorwig is limited by the size of the top lake. If you could build another Dinorwig but give it a bigger lake you would change the equation. There must be places suitable...

      M.

      1. Commswonk

        Re: Greens just don't understand numbers

        Dinorwig is limited by the size of the top lake. If you could build another Dinorwig but give it a bigger lake you would change the equation. There must be places suitable...

        Must there? Where?

        Apart from anything else if the reservoir at Dinorwig was doubled, the immediate result would be that the power needed to recharge the reservoir would be automatically doubled as well. The big downside of Pumped Storage is that it needs pumping, and that needs power generated by other means.

        I, for one, do not believe in perpetual motion machines.

        1. Commswonk

          Re: Greens just don't understand numbers

          I have just realised that there is a further flaw in the statement Dinorwig is limited by the size of the top lake. If you could build another Dinorwig but give it a bigger lake you would change the equation.

          For pumped storage to work there has to be a suitable "sump" which must hold the water after it has been forced through the turbines by gravity; without that sump there would be no water left to pump back up to the reservoir for later use. So doubling the capacity of the header tank would have to be accompanied by a doubling of the size of the sump, as well as doubling the energy required to pump the water back up again as previously mentioned.

          I'm sure the UK is just riddled with suitable sites... not.

          To be fair you would certainly change the equation but not in any way that could be described as remotely helpful.

        2. Roj Blake Silver badge

          Re: Greens just don't understand numbers

          There are other methods of storing energy - such as using the surplus to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into methane. It's not particularly efficient but at least you can use existing gas infrastructure to store, transport, and use it.

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