From Doncaster To Cleethorpes
These pictures were taken on my journey between Doncaster and Cleethorpes.
The area is best summed up as flat and decorated with these features.
- A few hedges.
- Some trees and some woodland.
- dozens of wind turbines.
- Lots of pylons carrying electricity.
- Scunthorpe steelworks
- A few stations and railway sidings.
- A couple of waterways.
- Estates of new housing as you approach Grimsby.
When I returned there was more of the same on the other side of the tracks.
With the addition of all the power stations at Keadby and a couple of wind farms.
These are my thoughts on how this landscape will look at some time after 2030.
More Onshore Wind Farms
There will be a lot more wind farms lining the Doncaster and Cleethorpes railway.
The government has said it might pay for turbines and transmission lines to spoil views.
I feel they will have to, to meet their net-zero targets.
There Will Be Massive Hydrogen Storage On The Other Side Of The Humber
SSE are developing Albrough and Centrica are developing Rough into two of the largest hydrogen stores in the world.
The wind farms of the North Sea will provide them with hydrogen.
More Housing
If the government has its wish there will be a lot more new housing.
And as the newer houses show in my pictures, many of them will have solar panels.
More Power Stations At Keadby
Consider.
- The main purpose of the power stations at Keadby will be to provide backup to the wind and solar power in the area and far out to sea.
- The power stations will use hydrogen stored at Albrough and Rough.
- Some of the gas-fired power stations at Keadby will be fitted with carbon capture.
- One hydrogen-fired power station is already being planned.
The power stations at Keadby will probably be capable of supplying several GW of zero-carbon energy.
There Will Be Energy-Hungry Industries Along The South Bank Of The Humber
Just as in the Victorian era, coal attracted steel-making, chemicals and refining to the area, a South Humberside with large amounts of energy will attract heavy industry again.
Already, Siemens have built a train factory at Goole.
There Will Also Be Large Greenhouses In Lincolnshire
Greenhouses are a wonderful green way of absorbing waste heat and carbon dioxide.
Where Have I Seen This Blend Of Offshore Energy, Hydrogen, Heavy Industry And Agriculture Before?
After I visited Eemshaven in the Northern Netherlands, I wrote The Dutch Plan For Hydrogen.
We are not doing something similar, but something much bigger, based on the hydrogen stores at Aldbrough and Brough, the massive offshore wind farms and Lincolnshire’s traditional heavy industry and agriculture.
The Railway Between Doncaster and Cleethorpes Will Be Developed
Just as the Dutch have developed the railways between Groningen and Eemshaven.
The Empires Strike Back
The theme of this post was suggested by this article in The Times by Gerard Baker, which is entitled Karma has come for Mark Carney — and Canada.
This is the sub-heading.
This embodiment of globalism finds himself championing national sovereignty just as Trump eyes a North American union
These are the two introductory paragraphs.
Mark Carney is the very embodiment of the globalist ideal that ruled the world for a quarter-century after the end of the Cold War. Born in the mid-1960s in the far Northwest Territories, he grew up in Alberta in the kind of place previous generations would never have left. But the brilliant kid from a large Catholic family won a scholarship to Harvard and then took a masters and doctorate at Oxford.
Marked out as a member of the intellectual elite of his generation, he followed their well-worn path and joined Goldman Sachs, working in the US, the UK and Japan. As international borders came down, goods and capital flowed around the world like water, and rootless young men and women feasted on the pot of gold at the End of History, Carney jetted from capital to capital, developing bond issuance strategies in post-apartheid South Africa and helping deal with the consequences of the Russian debt crisis of 1998.
Mark Carney has done very well!
I have a few thoughts.
Energy Production In Canada And The UK
I have just looked up how Canada produces its electricity.
- 17.5 % -Fossil fuel
- 14.6 % – Nuclear
- 8 % – Renewables
So how does Canada produce the other sixty percent?
Hydro! Wow!
As I write, the UK is producing electricity as follows.
- 10.7 % – Fossil fuel
- 37.7 % – Low-carbon
- 51.6 % – Renewables
Changes To Energy Use In The Next Ten Years
Three things will happen to energy generation and use in the next ten years.
- Our use of renewable and non-zero carbon sources will converge with Canada’s at about 75 %.
- The use of energy storage will grow dramatically in Canada and the UK.
- Green hydrogen production will increase dramatically to decarbonise difficult and expensive-to-decarbonise industries like aviation, cement, chemicals, glass, heavy transport, refining and steel.
Canada and the UK, together with a few other sun-, water- or wind-blessed countries, like Australia, Denmark, Falkland Islands, Iceland, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and Norway, who share a lot of our values, will be in the prime position to produce all this green hydrogen.
Conclusion
It does look like all the old empires of the Middle Ages are reasserting themselves.
Hence the title of this post!
Mark Carney is now in the right position to use Canada’s and a few other countries hydrogen muscles to power the world to net-zero.
Zenobē Lands Financing For 400MW Eccles Project
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Solar Power Portal.
This is the sub-heading.
Battery energy storage system (BESS) developer/operator Zenobē has announced that it has successfully financed its Eccles BESS project in Scotland, in one of the biggest finance rounds in European history.
These two paragraphs add more details.
The total debt raised for the 400MW/800MWh project was £220 million, which the company says is one of the largest finance raises for a standalone BESS project ever made in Europe. The funding was provided by a group of lenders organised by National Westminster Bank and KKR Capital Markets Partners LLP. Additionally, Zenobē has announced that construction on the Eccles BESS—the company’s largest battery project to date—has begun.
The Eccles BESS is the final part of the firm’s £750 million investment in Scotland. Zenobē’s Blackhillock BESS, a 200MW/400MWh project located near Inverness, recently began commercial operations, and is set to expand to 300MW/600MWh later this year.
Zenobe seem to be able to finance these projects, without too much difficulty.
Construction seems to have started. But then, I suspect there are wind turbines in the vScottish Borders already lined up to use the batteries.
This Google Map shows an Eccles substation.
Note.
- The Eccles substation is marked by the red arrow.
- The town at the East edge of the map is Coldstream.
- The England-Scotland border is clearly marked.
This second Google Map shows a closer view of the Eccles substation.
Note.
- t looks to be a substantial substation.
- There would appear to be plenty of space for a large battery.
- It is close to the A 597 road for the delivery of heavy equipment.
I suspect this substation could be the location of the battery.
It’s also right in the heart of Scottish onshore wind territory.
It is also according to the Solar Power Portal a £220 million project.
A project of this size will deliver substantial benefits in terms of work to the local community.
It will likely have a community benefit fund or something similar.
So you would expect the project would be welcomed into the local area.
But you would be wrong, if this article on the BBC, which is entitled Village ‘Heart Ripped Out’ By Battery Site Plans, is typical of the feeling about the batteries.
This is the sub-heading.
A rural community in the Borders is warning that Scotland’s renewable energy revolution is coming at a cost.
These three paragraphs add more detail.
Residents of Leitholm – a village between Coldstream and Greenlaw – claim the heart is being ripped out of their community with the arrival of battery storage facilities.
If all six proposed facilities are approved, more than 200 acres of farmland will be turned over to concreted compounds within a three-kilometre radius of their village.
Retired nursery owner Seonaid Blackie said: “This is not the place it used to be – people are worried sick.”
The residents view is balanced by industry expert Professor John Irvine, from St Andrew’s University, believes energy storage has a vital role to play in reaching net-zero targets.
My view is what is needed is an energy storage system, that can be built substantially underground.
If you look at large Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), they are best described as container parks.
We need energy storage systems, that fit in a single tennis court, rather than thirty football pitches.
Gravitricity is one possibility, who are also Scottish, who store energy using weights in disused mine shafts.
The French system; DELPHY is also a vertical system for storing hydrogen in a custom-built hole.
Practically, I believe the solution adopted will be to spread the batteries out and spend money on surrounding them with trees and other camouflage.
SSE And Gilkes Energy Submit Plans For Pumped Hydro Storage Project
The title of this post, is the same of this article in Solar Power Portal.
This is the sub-heading.
SSE Renewables and Gilkes energy have submitted a planning consent application to Scottish Ministers for a proposed Pumped Storage Hydro (PSH) project.
These two paragraphs add more detail.
The Fearna PSH project is proposed as a 50:50 joint venture project between SSE and Gilkes Energy, with Gilkes Energy leading the development under a developer services agreement with SSE Renewables. The scheme will have an installed capacity of 1.8GW and a stored capacity of up to 36GWh, providing 20 hours of storage. If approved, the project would be the largest pumped hydro scheme in the UK.
The proposed site is located around 25km from Invergarry in the Scottish Highlands and adjoins SSE Renewables’ existing Loch Quoich reservoir, which forms part of the Great Glen hydro scheme. The development will include the construction of tunnels and a new power station that will connect the existing Loch Quoich reservoir to an upper reservoir at Loch Fearna.
This Google Map shows the location of Invergarry and Loch Quoich.
Note.
Loch Quoich is the dolphin-shaped loch at the West of the image.
Invergarry is indicated by the red dot at the East of the image.
This second Google Map shows the location of Loch Fearna to the North-East of Loch Quoich.
These are my thoughts.
It Will Be A Large Scheme
With an installed capacity of 1.8GW and a stored capacity of up to 36GWh, providing 20 hours of storage, this is not a small scheme.
Wikipedia’s Description Of Loch Quoich
This is the first two paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry for Loch Quoich.
Loch Quoich (Scottish Gaelic: Loch Chuaich) is a loch and reservoir situated west of Loch Garry approximately 40 km northwest of Fort William, Lochaber, Scotland. The name means “loch of the quaich”. In 1896, it was listed as six miles long and three-quarters of a mile in width, belonging to Mrs. Ellice of Glenquoich, within the parish of Kilmonivaig.
Both lochs form part of the Glen Garry hydroelectricity project commissioned by the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board in the 1950s.
So is the Loch Fearna scheme, a massive repurposing of the existing Glen Garry hydroelectricity project?
I wrote about this before in Repurposing The Great Glen Hydro-Electric Scheme?
This map from the SSE Renewables web site shows the layout of the dams and power stations between Loch Quoich and Invergarry..
The sizes of the power stations in the scheme are as follows.
- Ceannacroc – 20 MW
- Livishie – 15 MW
- Glenmoriston- 37 MW
- Quoich – 18 MW
- Invergarry – 20 MW
- Mucomir – 1.7 MW
This gives a total power of 112.7 MW.
112.7 MW to 1.8 GW (1800 MW) is a colossal increase in power.
It should be noted that 1.8 GW is half the power of Hinckley Point C nuclear power station.
Europe’s Biggest Battery Storage Project Goes Live In Scotland
The title of this post, is the same, as this article in The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
Zenobe’s site at Blackhillock can store surplus generation for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine
These are the first two paragraphs.
Europe’s biggest battery storage project has entered commercial operation in Scotland, 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.
I believe we can do better, than install large lithium-ion batteries.
We need to get the pumped storage like Coire Glas, the liquid air like Highview Power and the gravity batteries like Gravitricity going as fast as we can.
They are more environmentally friendly than Tesla’s lithium ion tiddlers and a second generation liquid air battery appears to be 200 MW and 2.5 MWh, so they can supply 200 MW for 12.5 hours.
The Blackhillock battery can do just two hours.
Two of them working as a pair, with a 1 GW wind farm, are as big as a small modular nuclear reactor, so could do the same job, with respect to power supply, using machinery and tank designs, that have been used for decades.
I suspect, that like 1960s coal-fired power stations, they would keep running for fifty years and be simply recycled as steel, copper and other scrap.
Highview Power could make Bishops Stortford famous!
UK Government Sets 8-Hour Minimum For LDES Cap-And-Floor Scheme
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Energy Storage News.
This is the sub-heading.
The UK government has published a Technical Decision Document confirming crucial aspects of its long duration electricity storage (LDES) cap-and-floor scheme, which includes increasing the minimum duration required from six hours to eight.
These three paragraphs give more details.
The document, released by regulator Ofgem on 11 March, details the final overarching rules and requirements for the scheme as well as how it will be implemented, though significant detail still remains to be worked out.
The scheme will provide a cap-and-floor revenue protection for 20-25 years that will allow all capital costs to be recoverable, and is effectively a subsidy for LDES projects that may not be commercially viable without it. Most energy storage projects being deployed in the UK today are lithium-ion battery energy storage systems (BESS) of somewhere between 1-hour and 3-hour in duration (very occasionally higher).
One of the most significant new details of the scheme is that, following industry feedback, the minimum duration for projects to qualify has been increased from six hours to eight hours of continuous rated power.
As a control engineer, I believe this is all good stuff and is a good improvement on the previous regime.
The whole article is a must read and I believe that more investors, will invest heavily in energy storage.
But then the UK, with its massive potential for offshore wind, has the resources to create and fill many GW of energy storage.
Boris once said, that we would become the Saudi Arabia of wind!
Disused Oil Wells Could Enhance Compressed Air Storage
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Engineer.
This is the sub-heading.
A new study has shown how geothermal energy in abandoned oil and gas wells can boost the efficiency of compressed air energy storage by nearly 10 per cent.
These are the first two paragraphs.
Developed by researchers at Penn State University, the geothermal-assisted compressed air energy storage (GA-CAES) system harnesses the existing infrastructure of abandoned oil and gas wells (AOGWs). Compressed air is pumped into the wells, where geothermal heat raises its temperature and compresses it further. Published in the Journal of Energy Storage, the study showed how geothermal energy could increase round-trip efficiency by 9.5 per cent.
“This improvement in efficiency can be a game changer to justify the economics of compressed-air energy storage projects,” said corresponding author Arash Dahi Taleghani, Professor of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering at Penn State.
The Professor also says it could be a “win win situation!”
Trump must have nightmares about stories like this, especially, when the scientists have a name, that labels them as an immigrant.
UK Government Sets 8-Hour Minimum For LDES Cap-And-Floor Sheme
The title of this post, is the sa,e as that of this article on Energy Storage News.
This is the sub-heading.
The UK government has published a Technical Decision Document confirming crucial aspects of its long duration electricity storage (LDES) cap-and-floor scheme, which includes increasing the minimum duration required from six hours to eight
These paragraphs give full details.
The document, released by regulator Ofgem on 11 March, details the final overarching rules and requirements for the scheme as well as how it will be implemented, though significant detail still remains to be worked out.
The scheme will provide a cap-and-floor revenue protection for 20-25 years that will allow all capital costs to be recoverable, and is effectively a subsidy for LDES projects that may not be commercially viable without it. Most energy storage projects being deployed in the UK today are lithium-ion battery energy storage systems (BESS) of somewhere between 1-hour and 3-hour in duration (very occasionally higher).
One of the most significant new details of the scheme is that, following industry feedback, the minimum duration for projects to qualify has been increased from six hours to eight hours of continuous rated power.
The ‘continuous rated power’ aspect prevents shorter duration projects from bidding in a smaller section of their MW capacity in order to act like an 8-hour system.
Another interesting detail pointed out by several commentators is that the cap is a ‘soft’ one, meaning it will allow extra revenue to be shared between developers and consumers. Exact details on the ratio are yet to be determined.
As a Graduate Control Engineer from Liverpool University in the 1960s, I hope that the move from a six to eight hours minimum duration is feasible.
I wasn’t dealing with power systems, but with multi-vessel chemical plants.
These are my thoughts.
The biggest project, I was dealing with a few years later in the 1970s, was the modeling of all the the reservoirs and pipelines by the Water Resoures Board.
As the supply side of the water industry hasn’t had too many issues with the volume of water supplied, I feel that the main modelers must have done a reasonable job.
Six To Eight Hours Of Continuous Operation
The article says this about uprating from six to eight hours of continuous operations.
All the systems that have been proposed for cap-and-floor operation, seem to have some form of physical storage.
- Energy Dome appears to have tents of carbon dioxide.
- Energy Vault uses stacks of heavy weights.
- Form Energy has tanks of rust.
- Gravitricity has huge weights in disued mine shafts.
- Highview Power has large tanks of liquid air.
- Pumped storage hydro has two lakes, that hold water.
- Rheenergise has two large tanks, of a water-based slurry.
So to go from six to eight hours will hopefully just need some more storage.
Highview Power appears to use similar gas tanks to those used to store natural gas or hydrogen.
This image clipped from Highview’s web site, shows large tanks for liquified gas storage.
With tanks like these, which can hold GW-equivalents of liquid air, Highview could be building batteries with storage to rival the smaller pumped storage hydroelectric power stations. They are already talking of 200 MW/2.5 GWh systems, which would have a 12.5 hour continuous rating and would probably need two to three tanks.
Coire Glas Pumped Storage
I’ll use Coire Glas pumped storage hydro electric power station as an example.
As currently planned SSE’s Cioire Glas pumped storage hydroelectric power station is 1.5 GW/30 GWh, so it has a a 20 hour continuous rating.
In The UK’s Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity, I gave a rough estimate of the pumped storage hydroelectricity systems in operation or planed as nearly 11 GW/224GWh.
The Soft Cap
The article says this about a soft cap.
Another interesting detail pointed out by several commentators is that the cap is a ‘soft’ one, meaning it will allow extra revenue to be shared between developers and consumers. Exact details on the ratio are yet to be determined.
I seem to remember that when I was modeling a larger multi-vessel chemical plant at ICI, I was using sharing between vessels, to get the system to operate on a PACE-231R analog computer.
So I suspect a soft cap is possible.
Ørsted Breaks Ground On Innovative UK Battery Energy Storage System
The title of this post, is the same as that, as this news item from Ørsted.
This is the sub-heading.
Ørsted, a global leader in offshore wind energy, has marked breaking ground for its first large-scale UK battery energy storage system (BESS) with a golden shovel ceremony.
These four paragraphs give more details of the project.
Located alongside Ørsted’s Hornsea 3 Offshore Wind Farm, near Norwich, Norfolk, the system will have a capacity of 600 MWh (and a 300 MW power rating), equivalent to the daily power consumption of 80,000 UK homes.
The golden shovel ceremony officially kicks off the construction phase of the project, known as Iceni after the Norfolk-based warrior tribe of the Roman era. It is expected to be operational by the end of 2026.
Preparatory works are now complete and the Ørsted, Knights Brown and Tesla Iceni team will continue with the remainder of the installation.
When completed, the battery energy storage system will be one of the largest in Europe.
Note.
- The batteries themselves are from Tesla.
- The project was previously known as the Swardeston BESS.
- The project will be located near to the Swardeston substation to the South of Norwich.
- The project doesn’t seem very innovative to me, as it appears to be a BESS built from Tesla batteries.
Like many batteries, it is designed to supply power for two hours.
Drax To Get £24m In Green Subsidies For Pumped Hydro
The title of this post is the same as that of this article in The Times.
These three paragraphs give details of the subsidy.
Drax will bank £24 million in green subsidies from energy bill-payers for its pumped hydro assets, ahead of a revival in the energy storage technology in Britain.
The FTSE 250 constituent, which also operates Britain’s largest power station in North Yorkshire, has secured contracts to provide 434 megawatts of capacity from its pumped storage and hydro assets, the largest of which is the Cruachan power station near Oban in Scotland.
The contracts cover energy to be delivered between October 2028 to September 2029, at a price of £60 a kilowatt a year.
This will arouse the anti-Drax lobby, but it should be born in mind, that according to Wikipedia, Cruachan can provide a black start capability to the UK’s electrical grid.
This is Wikipedia’s definition of a black start.
A black start is the process of restoring an electric power station, a part of an electric grid or an industrial plant, to operation without relying on the external electric power transmission network to recover from a total or partial shutdown.
After the Great Storm of 1987, we were without power in my part of Suffolk for two weeks and I suspect there were several black starts in the South of England.
I suspect that power from interconnectors could now be used.
Drax is expanding Cruachan from 440 MW to 1 GW, which will be a large investment and surely increase its black start capability.
So in this case the future subsidy could be considered something like an insurance policy to make sure black start capability is available.
The Anonymous Widower 