The Anonymous Widower

UK’s Green Power Industry Receives Surprise £10bn Pledge

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in the Guardian.

This is the sub-heading.

Potential investment by NatPower would create largest portfolio of battery storage projects in Britain

These five paragraphs outline the proposed investment.

Britain’s under-pressure green power industry has received a surprise fillip after a renewables developer pledged to plough £10bn into what would become the largest portfolio of battery storage projects in the country.

NatPower, a UK startup that is part of a larger European energy group, is poised to submit planning applications for three “gigaparks”, with a further 10 to follow next year.

Battery storage projects are seen as a key part of the jigsaw to decarbonise Britain’s power grid, allowing electricity generated by wind turbines and solar panels to be stored for use when weather conditions are still or not sunny.

The NatPower investment would lead to the construction of 60 gigawatt hours of battery storage, with solar and wind projects also in the pipeline.

The two gigaparks would be located in the north of England, with a further site in the west of the country planned later this year. The projects would be built on industrial land, and also through leasing deals with farmers.

Note.

1. To gauge the scale of this development; the largest  energy storage development in the UK at present is SSE Renewable’s massive Coire Glas pumped storage hydro in the Highlands of Scotland, which is a 1.5 GW/30 GWh monster, that is budgeted to cost £1.5 billion.
2. NatPower has a web site, which has an opening video, which is all landscape, sun, water and wind, that would be worthy of an epic from Hollywood or by Eisenstein.
3. NatPower’s investment of £10 billion, buys them 60 GWh of storage and if it’s a proportionate amount of capacity to Coire Glas, perhaps around 3GW or around the capacity of Hinckley Point C.

I have a few thoughts.

Is It All A Hoax?

Those who were alive and sober in 1977, may well remember the April Fools’ Day Hoax of the Guardian of that year, which concerned a fake supplement in the paper promoting the island of San Serriffe.

The story has its own Wikipedia entry.

The web site; http://www.sanserriffe.com, doesn’t seem to be accessible.

Today’s story seems genuine, although some will smell a rat.

March 7, 2024 - Posted by AnonW | Energy, Energy Storage, Finance | Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), Hinckley Point C Nuclear Power Station, Hoax, NatPower