The Anonymous Widower

£100m Boost For Biggest UK Hydro Scheme In Decades

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.

This is the sub-heading.

A giant hydro scheme which would double the UK’s ability to store energy for long periods is taking a leap forward with a £100m investment by SSE.

These are the first three paragraphs.

The proposed 92m-high dam and two reservoirs at Coire Glas in the Highlands would be Britain’s biggest hydroelectric project for 40 years.

Scottish ministers approved the 1.5 GW pumped storage facility in 2020.

But power giant SSE wants assurances from the UK government before finally signing it off.

There are two major problems with this scheme.

Why The Forty Year Wait?

I am an Electrical and Control Engineer and it is a scandal that we are waiting forty years for another pumped storage scheme like the successful  Electric Mountain or Cruachan power stations to arrive.

Petrol or diesel vehicles have batteries for these three main purposes.

• To start the engine.
• To stabilise the output of the generator or alternator.
• To provide emergency power.

As to the latter, I can’t be the only person, who has dragged a car out of a ford on the starter motor. But think of the times, you’ve used the hazard warning lights, after an accident or an engine failure.

The nightmare of any operator of a complicated electricity network like the UK’s is a black start, which is defined by Wikipedia like this.

A black start is the process of restoring an electric power station or a part of an electric grid to operation without relying on the external electric power transmission network to recover from a total or partial shutdown.

Hydro electric power stations and especially those that are part of pumped storage schemes are ideal for providing the initial power, as they are often easy to start and have water available. Cruachan power station has a black start capability, but at 440 MW is it big enough?

Over the last few years, many lithium-ion batteries have been added to the UK power network, which are used to stabilise the grid, when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.

There are four pumped storage hydro-electric schemes in the UK.

• Cruachan – 440 MW/7 GWh – 1965
• Dinorwig (Electric Mountain) – 1800 MW/9.1 GWh -1984
• Ffestiniog – 360MW/1.44 GWh – 1963
• Foyers – 300 MW/6.3 GWh – 1974

Note.

1. I always give the power output and the storage capacity for a battery, if it is known.
2. According to Wikipedia, Scotland has a potential for around 500 GWh of pumped storage.
3. The largest lithium-ion battery that I know, that is being planned in the UK, is Intergen’s 320 MW/640 MWh battery at Thames Gateway, that I wrote about in Giant Batteries Will Provide Surge Of Electricity Storage. It’s smaller than any of the four current pumped storage schemes.
4. The Wikipedia entry for Coire Glas says that it is a 1.5 GW/30 GWh pumped storage hydro-electric power station.

I very much feel that even one 1.5 GW/30 GWh pumped storage hydro-electric power station must make a big difference mathematically.

Why have we had to wait so long? It’s not as though a pumped storage hydro-electric power station of this size has suffered a serious disaster.

Drax Needs Assurances Too?

The BBC article says this.

Scotland’s only other pumped storage scheme, operated by Drax Group, is housed within a giant artificial cavern inside Ben Cruachan on the shores of Loch Awe in Argyll.

The North Yorkshire-based company plans to more than double the generating capacity of its facility, nicknamed Hollow Mountain, to more than 1GW, with the construction of a new underground power station.

But both Drax and SSE have been reluctant to press ahead without assurances from Whitehall.

It looks like the right assurances would open up at least two pumped storage hydro-electric power station projects.

But it could be better than that, as there are other projects under development.

• Balliemeanoch – 1.5GW/45 GWh
• Corrievarkie – 600 MW/14.5 GWh
• Loch Earba – 900 MW/33 GWh
• Loch Kemp – 300 MW/9 GWh
• Red John – 450 MW/2.8 GWh

This totals to 3750 MW/104.3 GWh or 5850 MW/134.3 GWh with the addition of Coire Glas and the extension to Cruachan.

Getting the assurances right could result in large amounts of construction in Scotland!

What Assurances Do Power Giants SSE And Drax Want Before Signing Off?

This news item on SSE Renewables, which is dated 18th March 2022, is entitled Ministerial Roundtable Seeks To Unlock Investment In UK Energy Storage.

These three paragraphs gives details of the meeting.

Business leaders have met with UK Energy Minister the Rt Hon Greg Hands MP to discuss how the government could unlock significant investment in vital energy storage technologies needed to decarbonise the power sector and help ensure greater energy independence.

The meeting was organised by the Long-Duration Electricity Storage Alliance, a new association of companies, progressing plans across a range of technologies to be first of their kind to be developed in the UK for decades.

Representatives from Drax, SSE Renewables, Highview Power and Invinity Energy Systems met with The Rt Hon Greg Hands MP, Minister of State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth [yesterday].

But they still don’t seem to have come up with a funding mechanism.

• In this case, it seems that multiple politicians may not be to blame, as Greg Hands was the Minister of State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth until the 6th of September 2022, when he handed over to Graham Stuart, who is still the incumbent.
• Could it be that civil servants for this problem need to be augmented by a Control Engineer with mathematical modelling skills from a practical university?

It is the sort of problem, I would love to get my teeth into, but unfortunately my three mentors in accountancy and banking; Bob, Brian and David, who could have helped me, have all passed on to another place to help someone else with their problems.

I’ve just had a virtual meeting with all three and they told me to look at it like a warehousing system.

Consider.

• It would be very easy to measure the amount of water stored in the upper reservoir of a pumped storage hydro-electric power station.
• It would also be easy to measure the electricity flows to and from the pumped storage hydro-electric power station.
• A monetary value could be placed on the water in the upper reservoir and the flows, depending on the current price for electricity.

So it should be possible to know that a pumped storage hydro-electric power station, was perhaps storing energy as follows.

• 10 GWh for SSE
• 8 GWh for RWE
• 6 GWh for Scottish Power
• 6 GWh is not being used

And just as in a warehouse, they would pay a fee of so much for storing each GWh for an hour.

• The system would work with any type of storage.
• Would competition between the various storage sites bring down prices for storing electricity?
• Pumped storage operators would get a bonus when it rained heavily.
• Just as they do now, electricity generators would store it when prices are low and retrieve it when prices are high.

A lot of the rules used to decide where electricity goes would still work.

March 22, 2023 Posted by AnonW | Energy, Energy Storage, Finance | Coire Glas Pumped Hydro, Contracts for Difference, Control Engineering, Cruachan Power Station, Dinorwig Power Station (Electric Mountain), Ffestiniog Pumped Hydro, Foyers Pumped Hydro, Intergen, Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity, RWE, Scotland, SSE Renewables | 3 Comments