Gravitricity Weighs Up One Of Europe’s Deepest Mines
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Engineer.
This is the sub-heading.
Scotland’s Gravitricity is set to deploy its underground energy storage technology at Pyhäsalmi Mine in central Finland, Europe’s deepest zinc and copper mine.
These two paragraphs outline the scheme.
Located about 450km north of the Finnish capital Helsinki, the Pyhäsalmi Mine extends 1,444m below the Earth. With mine operations at Pyhäsalmi winding down, the local community set up a development company to explore redevelopment projects around the mine’s infrastructure, including energy storage.
Gravitricity is set to deploy its GraviStore energy storage technology in a 530m deep auxiliary shaft. GraviStore can utilise off-peak electricity by raising heavy weights in the mine shaft, releasing the energy back on to the grid during high demand by lowering the weights. It’s claimed the 2MW scheme at Pyhäsalmi will provide grid balancing services to the Finnish network.
There is also this quote from Martin Wright,who is Gravitricity’s executive chairman.
This project will demonstrate at full scale how our technology can offer reliable long life energy storage that can capture and store energy during periods of low demand and release it rapidly when required.
This full-scale project will provide a pathway to other commercial projects and allow our solution to be embedded into mine decommissioning activities, offering a potential future for mines approaching the end of their original service life.
Can it be that Gravitricity is finally on its way?
World’s First Semi-Submersible Floating Offshore Wind Farm Smashes Predictions
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.
This is the sub-heading.
WindFloat Atlantic, the world’s first semi-submersible floating offshore wind farm, has completed its third year in operation, closing in 2023 with an electricity production of 80 GWh.
These four paragraphs outline the performance of the wind farm.
Connected to the grid by the end of 2019 and fully commissioned in 2020, the floating offshore wind farm was developed by the Windplus consortium formed by Ocean Winds, a 50:50 joint venture between EDPR and ENGIE, Repsol, and Principle Power.
The pioneer wind farm consists of three platforms, each supporting one 8.4-MW Vestas turbine, which are anchored with chains to the seabed and connected to the onshore substation in the Portuguese municipality of Viana do Castelo through a 20-kilometre cable.
According to the project’s owners and operators, the 25 MW WindFloat Atlantic also closed in 2023 breaking more records with Storm Ciaran posing challenges with waves reaching a maximum height of 20 metres and wind gusts up to 139 kilometres per hour.
These conditions far surpassed the project’s previous records, demonstrating the readiness and robustness of the floating technology, even in extreme offshore conditions.
It would appear that this and the previous post; France’s First And Only Operational Floating Wind Turbine Gets Lifetime Extension, are not only indicating that floating wind power works, but that it works well in all types of conditions.
France’s First And Only Operational Floating Wind Turbine Gets Lifetime Extension
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.
This is the sub-heading.
Floatgen, the demonstration floating wind turbine installed at the SEM-REV offshore test site in France, has completed its planned five-year run but will operate for another five years as the demo project was decided to get a lifetime extension.
These are the first three paragraphs.
The floater, which consists of a 2 MW Vestas V80 wind turbine mounted on BW Ideol’s Damping Pool foundation, reached electricity production milestones several times since going into full operation in September 2018.
According to BW Ideol, Floatgen’s cumulated production has now surpassed 30 GWh, which the company ascribes to “the hydrodynamic properties and excellent sea-keeping capabilities” of its floating foundation.
Floatgen’s availability averaged 92.18 per cent between January 2021 and January 2024, with December 2023 standing out with a monthly production record of 922.026 MWh and a 61.96 per cent capacity factor, BW Ideol says.
Note.
- A three-year availability average of 92.18 % is surely very good.
- A 61.96 % capacity factor is better than most other floating wind farms, which are generally in the fifties.
With those figures, I suspect BW Ideol will be expecting, some orders soon.
This video shows a Floatgen being constructed.
A New Future Beckons For Scotland’s Historic Canals
The title of this post is the same as that as this article on The Herald.
This is the sub-heading.
Scotland’s canals, created for the industrial revolution but in recent times focused more on leisure than industry, are finding a new purpose as a different revolution, this time a green one, gets underway
The article was found by my Google Alert for the Coire Glas project, which is one of the UK’s largest green projects.
The article describes how Scotland’s canals are helping a green revolution and is well worth a read.
Are Londoners The Tunnel Kings?
I was born in 1947 and it was in the early 1960s, that I started to develop an interest in engineering, which eventually led me to study Electrical Engineering and Electronics at Liverpool University.
Like most Londoners, I was a frequent user of the Underground and for six or seven years, I took the Piccadilly Line many days between Oakwood and Southgate to go to Minchenden Grammar School. Often, after school, I would go on to my father’s print works near Word Green tube station.
But not memories of London’s tunnels were so memorable at that time. One day, we were driving to see my Uncle Bert in Broadstairs and we were held in the Blackwall Tunnel for an hour or so because of an accident.
Perhaps, this is why I can remember a black-and-white video of digging the Western Tunnel of the Dartford Crossing so vividly. But as Raymond Baxter probably explained to BBC viewers at the time, it dug using a Greathead shield under pressure to keep the water out. It was probably the last tunnel dug under the Thames using methods, that would have been familiar to Victorian engineers.
This British Pathe video shows some of the construction of the Western tunnel.
This paragraph from the Wikipedia entry for the Eastern Tunnel describes its construction.
Construction was approved in April 1971, with an initial expected opening date in 1976. Work was delayed due to a lack of funds, which was resolved by EEC funding granted in 1974. The second tunnel opened in May 1980, allowing each tunnel to handle one direction of traffic, by which time the joint capacity of the two tunnels had increased to 65,000 vehicles per day. Connection of the crossing to the M25 was completed on the northerly Essex side in September 1982 (Junction 31), and to the southerly Kent side in September 1986 (Junction 1a)
The tunnels may be inadequate in terms of capacity, but they have certainly done a reliable job for sixty and forty-three years respectively.
There are other tunnels under the Thames, that have been built in my lifetime.
- Thames Cable Tunnel – 1970 – National Grid’s 400 kV cable.
- High Speed One – 2007
- Dartford Tunnel (East) – 1980
- Dartford Tunnel (West) – 1963
- Dartford Cable Tunnel – 2004
- Docklands Light Railway Tunnel – 2009
- Elizabeth Line Tunnel – 2014
- Millennium Dome Cable Tunnel – 1999
- Jubilee Line Tunnels – 1999 – Planned by Artemis
- Blackwall Runnel (East) – 1967
- Isle of Dogs Jubilee Line Tunnels – 1999 – Planned by Artemis
- Docklands Light Railway Tunnel – 1999 – Planned by Artemis
- Deptford Cable Tunnel –
- Jubilee Line Tunnels – 1999 – Planned by Artemis
- Victoria Line Tunnel – 1971
- New Cross to Finsbury Market Cable Tunnel – 2017
- Wimbledon to Pimlico Cable Tunnel – 1996
- London Power Tunnels – 2018, 2011
There are also these tunnels, which don’t go under the Thames
Bank Station Expansion And New Southbound Northern Line Tunnel – 2022
- Elstree to St. John’s Wood Cable Tunnel – 2005
- Heathrow Rail Tunnels – 1998
- Lee Tunnel – 2016
- Limehouse Link Tunnel – 1993
- Lower Lea Valley Cable Tunnels – 2008
- Northern Line Extension To Battersea – 2021
- Piccadilly Line Extension To Heathrow – 1975-2008
- Thames Tideway Tunnel – Estimated completion in 2025 – Tunnelling ended in 2022.
- Thames Water Ring Main – 2010
Note.
- The date is the opening date.
- I am pleased to see that at least some projects were planned, with the software, I wrote in a Suffolk attic.
In my lifetime, at least 27 substantial tunnels have been completed, a very large proportion of which have been on time and on budget, with the possible exception of the Heathrow Rail Tunnels, which collapsed.
So Why Has London Got A Good Record On Tunnelling?
In Millicent And Ursula Prepare To Go Tunnelling, I describe my visit to the Tideway Open Day today to see the tunnel boring machines; Millicent and Ursula before they went tunnelling.
On that Sunday morning, I also chatted with the engineers and tunnelers.
- All had worked on at least one of London’s previous tunnels.
- One had worked on the Second Dartford Tunnel, the Channel Tunnel and Crossrail.
- A couple said, that after the Tideway finished, they would be off to High Speed Two.
Is London’s good record on delivering tunnels safely and on time and on budget, a case of lots of experience and practice makes perfect?
If it is, we should definitely think hard about how we handle large projects.
Wind Farms
Many have been constructed this way.
- The grid substation and connection to the grid is built.
- The foundations of the turbines are installed.
- The turbines are erected.
- All the turbines are commissioned.
This sequence or something like it can be applied to onshore and offshore wind farms.
- Most jobs are repeated many times by specialist teams using purpose-built cranes, ships and other equipment.
- Bigger wind farms, just need more repeated operations.
- All operations are generally in a small geographical area.
- I suspect specialist software has been built to project manage, the building of wind farms. If it hasn’t, I have my ideas.
Project management should be relatively easy.
Amazon Books Over Half Of Moray West Offshore Wind Capacity To Power UK Operations
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.
This is the sub-heading.
Amazon has signed a corporate power purchase agreement (CPPA) for a total of 473 MW of Moray West offshore wind farm’s generation capacity to help power its operations when the project becomes operational later this year.
These are the first two paragraphs.
The technology giant signed the CPPA with ENGIE, which owns the Moray West project through Ocean Winds, the 50-50 joint venture between ENGIE and EDP Renewables.
The 473 MW Amazon secured through the agreement is enough to power the equivalent of more than 650,000 UK homes annually and is more than half of the total installed capacity of the 882 MW Moray West offshore wind farm.
Note.
- In Google Buys Scottish Offshore Wind Power, I talked about how Google had signed a Corporate Power Purchase Agreement to buy 100 MW from the Moray West offshore wind farm.
- This would mean that there’s still 305 MW of capacity to allocate.
- I would assume you wouldn’t sell hundred percent of capacity to give yourself leeway.
But what do you do, if your wind farm isn’t producing the 573 MW you need to satisfy the CPPAs you’ve sold? I suspect you have to buy it on the market.
If And When Do Amazon Think About Batteries?
My twenty-five-year-old self could have developed methods to calculate the answer to that question, as it would have been a simple calculation for the analogue computer, that I was using at the time; a PACE-231-R.
They really were magnificent machines.
Pension Power Backing For New Battery Energy Storage Plant
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Nation.Cymru.
These paragraphs outline the project,
A new battery energy storage plant at the site of a decommissioned power station will be funded by Welsh pensioners.
The plan for the facility at the former Uskmouth B Power Station at the Gwent Wetlands on the edge of Newport, was approved by the city council’s planning committee this January.
The batteries will store excess power during times of “excess supply” and then put that electricity back into the grid when demand is higher.
The Greater Gwent Pension Fund, which manages the retirement savings of more than 65,000 members from Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, Monmouthshire Newport and Torfaen councils as well as 52 other active employers in the Gwent region, has revealed it is investing in the project.
According to their Wikipedia entry, the Uskmouth power stations have had rather a chequered history and both appear to be currently non-productive.
- The original coal-fired Uskmouth A has been demolished and the site is now occupied by an 832 MW gas-fired CCGT power station. Currently, it is in a ‘dormant’ state, after its owner entered administration.
- The original coal-fired Uskmouth B has been converted and now can generate 363 MW on a mixture of biomass and waste plastic. Uskmouth B is currently being demolished.
This press release from Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners is entitled Quinbrook To Build Large-Scale Battery Storage Project At Uskmouth, South Wales.
This is the sub-heading.
Uskmouth will be one of the largest storage projects in the UK and will directly support the UK’s energy transition.
These first two paragraphs outline the project.
Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners (“Quinbrook”), a specialist investment manager focused on renewables, storage and grid support infrastructure has acquired the exclusive development rights for one of the UK’s largest battery storage projects to date.
The planned 230MW / 460MWh Battery Energy Storage System (“BESS”), will be located at the site of the former Uskmouth coal fired power station in south Wales (“Project Uskmouth”) and will seek to utilise existing power transmission infrastructure and provide a new lease of life to the area. Uskmouth was acquired from Simec Atlantis Energy Limited (“SAE”). Quinbrook has partnered with Energy Optimisation Solutions Limited (“EOS”) in the origination and development of Project Uskmouth, which represents a major anchoring project in the planned re-development and regeneration of the Uskmouth site into a Sustainable Energy Park that will support innovative future industry. Quinbrook considers these types of regeneration projects as key to making meaningful contributions to delivery of the Government’s Levelling Up ambitions.
Note.
- The battery can supply 230 MW for two hours.
- It looks like the battery will replace the older of the two power stations and work with the relatively-modern 832 MW gas-fired CCGT power station.
- Will they act as backup to renewables?
As there are very few renewables in the area, will this work with the wind farms being developed in the Celtic Sea or are Quinbrook anticipating wind farms South of Newport in the Bristol Channel?
I have a few thoughts.
Will Uskmouth Work With Hinckley Point C?
This Google Map shows the relative locations of Uskmouth and Hinckley Point C.
Note.
- Uskmouth is just South of Newport, in the North-East corner of the map.
- I estimate that Uskmouth and Hinckley Point C are 24.7 miles apart.
A cable across the Bristol Channel would surely increase the energy security of South Wales.
Will There Be Wind Farms In The Bristol Channel?
I feel that this is inevitable.
This document on the Welsh Government web site is entitled Future Potential For Offshore Wind In Wales, was written by The Carbon Trust.
This paragraph is the document’s assessment of wind farms in the Bristol Channel.
Despite high energy demand and good infrastructure, environmental conditions in the Bristol Channel
makes this area challenging for offshore wind development. In addition to lower average wind speeds,
the Bristol Channel has complex seabed, including areas of hard rock, and is exposed to strong tidal
currents from the Severn Estuary. Seabed conditions and tidal currents were the main drivers behind
cancellation of the Atlantic Array project and it is considered unlikely that a developer would look to
revive this site in the near-term, particularly given competition with other more favourable UK sites.
That doesn’t seem very promising.
But this is the document’s assessment of wind farms in the Pembrokeshire Atlantic area.
Exposure to the prevailing south-westerly Atlantic wind and swells means that the waters off
Pembrokeshire have excellent wind speeds, often exceeding 10 m/s, but also a harsher wave
environment than elsewhere in Wales. Significantly, water depths quickly increase to over 50m,
suggesting that floating foundations are likely to be required, particularly if projects are located
further from shore, which is likely given constraints from environmental impact and seascape near to
the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.Grid infrastructure is constrained for thermal generation but should not be a barrier to new
renewables. The Greenlink interconnector could also support the addition of new capacity. The region
has good port infrastructure at Milford Haven and Pembroke Dock, which is already actively pursuing
upgrades to future proof the port for potential offshore wind deployment.
That is a lot more promising.
- Some demonstration wind farms are under development.
- Hopefully, the steel would be available at Port Talbot.
- I can see this area, having almost 50 GW of floating wind.
I do feel though, that once the sea off Pembrokeshire is full of wind farms, that developers will turn their attention to the more difficult waters of the Bristol Channel.
Is The Uskmouth BESS A Good Investment?
The Nation.Cymru article discusses this and what they say is well worth reading.
My feelings are that the BESS will be very busy balancing electricity on the South Wales Coast and to and from Ireland using the 500 MW Greenlink Interconnector, which opens this year.
These electrical systems are relatively easy to model and I suspect Quinbrook wouldn’t be investing, if the BESS was not going to generate a substantial income.
BlueFloat, Renantis And Ørsted Move Forward With 1 GW Scottish Floater
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.
This is the sub-heading.
Stromar Offshore Wind Farm Limited, a joint venture between Ørsted, BlueFloat Energy, and Renantis, has submitted the environmental impact assessment (EIA) scoping and habitats regulations appraisal (HRA) screening reports for the 1 GW floating offshore wind farm in Scotland.
These are the first three paragraphs, which outline the progress that has been made so far.
The reports for the project, which is located approximately 50 kilometres from the Port of Wick, were delivered to the Marine Directorate and Aberdeenshire Council.
The EIA scoping reports outline the plans for the development, addressing both onshore and offshore considerations while the HRA screening reports outline the key protected sites and species of relevance to the Stromar development area. The HRA screening reports also present how impacts will be assessed in more detail at the next stage, the developer said.
The project team will now schedule several community consultation events in Spring 2024 to ensure stakeholders are fully informed and that their views are considered in the site selection, design, and development of the project, according to the developer.
This map shows the various ScotWind leases.
Note.
- The numbers are Scotwind’s lease number in their documents.
- 10 is now Stromar
- This is the Stromar web site.
- One of the partners; Falck Renewables changed its name to Renantis in 2022.
- The next stage is to be awarded a Contract for Difference.
The Internet is suggesting a completion date of 2028.
ScottishPower Makes Hydrogen Aviation Pact
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on reNEWS.biz.
These two paragraphs outline the project.
ScottishPower has partnered with ZeroAvia to explore the development of green hydrogen supply solutions for key airports, with the aim of seeing the decarbonisation of air travel take off.
The collaboration will allow the companies to explore the hydrogen infrastructure for airports to support hydrogen-electric flight and other potential uses.
There is no point of having zero-carbon hydrogen-electric aircraft without the ability to refuel them.
This picture comes from ScottishPower’s original press release.
I can see a system like this having applications in industries like buses, farming, heavy transport and mining.
Funding Announced For First-In-Class Low-Carbon Installation Vessel For Floating Offshore Wind
The title of this post, is the same as that of this news item from Morek Engineering.
These two paragraphs outline the project.
The UK Government has awarded funding to a consortium led by Morek Engineering to design a new class of low-carbon installation vessel for the floating offshore wind market.
The consortium has won the funding through the UK Government’s Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition based on their proven track record in innovative vessel design and delivery of complex offshore operations. The consortium includes Morek Engineering, Solis Marine Engineering, Tope Ocean, First Marine Solutions and Celtic Sea Power.
Note.
- The design of the ship certainly seems to tick all the boxes.
- This is Morek’s web site.
Because of my experience of writing project management systems, I often wonder, whether some of my discarded ideas of the 1980s could be used in the deployment of floating offshore wind.
The Anonymous Widower 