Europe's largest battery site goes live in Scotland, boosting UK energy grid(www.techspot.com)

59 pointsby teamonkey2 days ago2 comments

anovikova day ago
Question must be, what's the point of uber large storage sites? Storage is essential, but where is the economy of scale of large sites, how are they more economic than small - say container-sized, a ~1 MWh - ones? Having smaller systems, closer to producer, must also save on transmission capacity, no? Not to mention, given the geopolitical situation, their safety.
I'm also convinced that separating generation and storage is simply an awfully, comically bad idea: generation that needs storage - solar and wind - is DC, storage is also DC. Transmission is usually AC or at least goes through AC/DC conversion at some point.
Why wasting a lot of additional energy to store it by doing an extra unneeded AC/DC conversion which happens if storage is separate from generation? Instead of storing DC energy as it is produced and discharging it - by converting to AC and feeding into the grid - as it is needed?
- vikramkra day ago
  My uneducated guess would be shared power infrastructure, easier licensing and permitting for one site, one large safety/fire extinguishment system instead of many, etc. The article mentions only 2 transformers needed to link that entire station to the grid. Also the controls, managing power delivery from thousands of small batteries versus one centralized facility. And if that particular wind or solar project doesn't go well for some reason the battery isn't tied to it, it's stabilizing the overall grid. Not sure though it is a good question, probably some technical or regulatory docs that go into details somewhere, I'd imagine this would have a ton of bureaucracy before getting built
- whoiscroberts2 hours ago
  This might be a small site by the time the planet is converted.
- a day ago
  undefined
- a day ago
  undefined
- s1artibartfasta day ago
  I think your assumptions about transmission losses are wrong.
  Transmission losses are on the order of a couple percent. Most of these large sites are literally composed of 1-2 mwh containerized units side by side.
  - anovikova day ago
    Transmission losses are not high, but AC/DC conversion losses are significant. Whenever there's a chance to avoid an extra conversion it's inefficient to miss it.
    While as other commenter said, this is only pertinent to solar, not to wind.
    Speaking of saving on transmission capacity i didn't mean "limiting transmission losses" but "avoiding hitting the limit of transmission power lines because the power will travel a shorter distance between the producer and the battery".
NullPrefixa day ago
>The first phase, which just went live, has a capacity of 200MW. The second phase, scheduled for 2026, will add an additional 100MW, bringing the total capacity to 300MW/600MWh.
Love the capacity transition from megawatts to megawatthours. This journalist definitely understands the topic
- Symbiotea day ago
  They're quoting directly from the press release, but I've no problem with that when it means the facts remain.
  https://www.zenobe.com/news-and-events/blackhillock-battery-...
  The company also recycles EV batteries for other uses, but presumably not in this case or I'm sure they would have mentioned it.
  - NullPrefixa day ago
    The phrase was not in quotes or prefixed with an arrow or anything
- teamonkeya day ago
  Assuming you mean it sarcastically, in that you can’t convert MW to MWh, you’re misreading.
  > total capacity to 300MW/600MWh. This is equivalent to powering more than 3.1 million homes for two hours
  It can deliver 300MW for 2 hours = 600MWh total energy storage.
- s1artibartfasta day ago
  This is the correct industry standard. Grid capacity is measured in MW.
  National grid operators measure power capacity in mw, not mwh, because their primary concern is dispatchable power.
  Battery storage is optionally stated as MW/MWh
  - phil21a day ago
    It’s industry standard due to historical reasons, not because a primary concern is not how much storage (how long a given source can provide the nameplate power for) there is. Until recently the nameplate on a power source could be generally expected to run at its rated capacity factor indefinitely.
    Battery storage has almost been exclusively used for ancillary services, where storage was almost irrelevant. Now that it’s starting to be expected to provide actually useful power to consumers it will slowly become the primary metric that matters.
    Usually power capacity is used in press releases to greenwash things and be purposefully misleading to a naive audience. Nice to see this finally starting to change.
    s1artibartfast18 hours ago
    I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't see it as a greenwashing conspiracy, and I especially don't see it as a journalistic error as the parent claimed.
    Just because someone doesn't know industry terms doesn't mean those terms are incorrect.
    Regarding your point about nameplate power, dispatchable sources have existed for almost a century using this convention.