Faith, Hope and Batteries
But the greatest of these is faith, because batteries – and other storage “solutions” – don’t yet work at scale
POSTED ON 23 FEB 23
BY MARK HODGSON
In a comment on Blown Away, in which I discussed the Scottish Government’s Onshore Wind Policy Statement 2022, Jit asked “Any mention of how swingy the electricity supply is going to be?” The answer to which is, I think, “yes and no”, for the simple reason that although the policy statement does recognise the intermittency problem (in a heavily disguised manner), it doesn’t really address it.
Scotland
The extent to which the problem is recognised at all can be seen at Section 8.4, which discusses “Security of Supply & Storage Potential”. I take the following extraordinarily convoluted paragraph to amount to an admission that wind turbines are unreliable and can lead to power shortages, the gap is currently filled largely by fossil fuels coming to the rescue, and that the new system will have to find a way of dealing with that problem (though naturally the statement doesn’t use clear language to make clear what the problem is):
We believe that onshore wind can play a greater part in helping to address the substantial challenges of maintaining security of supply and network resilience in a decarbonised electricity system. This will mean an increasing ability to provide some of the services and responses that are currently provided by thermal generation, and market / regulatory arrangements which can incentivise and support such outcomes.
Sir Humphrey would be proud of the opaque and confusing choice of language, but we get the gist of it from what follows. First we are treated to a discussion about Black Start. The policy statement explains only briefly what this is, but the National Grid website goes into more detail:
https://cliscep.com/2023/02/23/faith-hope-and-batteries/
