Re: energy in UK

On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:

On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
 

UK national infrastructure has been privatised and robbed blind by
vulture capitalists since the 1980's. It isn't just electricity that is
problematic London's water supply was in dire danger of going bust too.
>
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66051555
>
It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load the
balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners.
>
Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.

 There will never be enough batteries to power even a tiny country like
the UK,  to keep people alive through a few weeks of cold, dark, still
weather.

I'm inclined to agree. But provided that you use nuclear power generation for the base load you only need about 60GWhr of battery storage to time shift night time electricity to cover the daytime.
UK BESS operators should be limited to having a substation capable of recharging their storage capacity at the C/8 rate so that they can recharge during the slack hours (2200-1800) in winter and then resupply at peak times (0900-2100) major evening peak is 1800-2100. In summer it is much less of a problem - the system really creaks in winter.
They like to charge at C/2 to exploit the pricing algorithm glitches and isn't all that good for the batteries.
It would take an impossibly large battery storage capacity to handle a long becalmed event in mid winter. The numbers that NESO bandy around for UK net zero by 2030/50 (delete as appropriate) are pure fantasy.
Our grid system will fail soon but I live in the northern region that will still have power (and mains water) when it all goes to pot. NESO's long term decadal master plan is for two or more very long DC cables in the North Sea for the Russians to sabotage as and when they like.
https://www.neso.energy/document/315516/download
Page 7 (and elsewhere) - warning it is very long and tedious stuff.
Volume and pretty pictures makes up for useful technical content.

People can keep warm by snuggling around burning lithium batteries.

The big snag with Lithium batteries is their nasty tendency to catch fire spectacularly. A guy at nearby Newcastle University is an expert on such incidents - there isn't any good way to put such fires out either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jby0uyL78YU
Skip to 12 minutes in for the juicy bits
(starts with a chemistry lesson)
I'm fighting a plan to build the world's largest BESS on my doorstep.
It would be hard to find a worse spot to put one. We are sat on the choke point where the 400kV lines are routinely overloaded in winter.
--
Martin Brown