Re: 1GW (sic) Battery Energy Storage Systems

On 24/11/2024 14:42, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 11/24/24 12:40, Martin Brown wrote:

There is a startup company in the UK called NatPower (no relation to the real National Power PLC aka NPower) claiming to have over 25 years of experience in BESS. They are proposing 1GW (sic) BESS in all sorts of brown and green field UK sites. They have no track record that I can find. Does anyone here know of any real international project(s) that they have actually done and more importantly *delivered*?
(their own PR or its uncritical repetition in the press doesn't count)
>
Their website is very slick indeed but I suspect that beauty is only skin deep. I am interesting in evidence of substance not PR fluff.
>
Can someone provide me with some rough estimates of what a 1GW class energy storage system ought to look like in terms of layout and the number of container sized units and space required?
(or at least sanity check my guesstimate below)
>
Assuming that they mean 1GWh I reckon it will be about 2000T of Lithium batteries. If each module is storage container sized and can contain 20m^2 of batteries I reckon it is about 100 units (twice that if I have over estimated how much battery you can safely fit in a module). I haven't been able to find any manufacturers specifications for them.

 It makes no sense to build large concentrated battery storage
facilities. Such installations should be  distributed.

I think you are quite likely right but there seems to be a global league table for building ever bigger ones much like with camera megapixels...
https://www.quantistry.com/blog/the-largest-batteries-in-the-world
In the UK there is a secondary problem that most of the power generation occurs in the north where it is windy and historically all the dirty coal fired power stations were, but most of the consumption is in London and the South East. Land prices are however much cheaper in the north.
Guess where they build the battery storage even though the provision of North South interconnectors is already borderline for peak load and there are known bottlenecks in addition.

Natpower seems to consist of only directors and managers. Not
a good sign.

Agreed.
--
Martin Brown