The Anonymous Widower

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!

March 19, 2025 Posted by | Energy, Energy Storage | , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments