Sunday, September 08, 2024

Can Bus Sized Lithium Ion Batteries Power Britain

Mentioned in the Domesday Book, the pretty, peaceful English village of Granborough, Berkshire, has been around for over a thousand years without ever making the headlines on national news although it was mentioned in one of the James Bond films.

All that could be about to change however, the village has been identified as the potential site for not one, but two giant battery installations, "each capable of storing 10.6 Gw," according to the pre - publicity, and a solar farm.Energy companies Statera and Statkraft have applied for planning permission to build two 500-megawatt sites near a new electricity substation, arguing that the plan is needed to facilitate the transition to a decarbonised electricity grid.

The project has, predictably, provoked local opposition. “This might become an industrial area more than the farming land it’s been for the last thousand years,” says Jamie Ingham Clark, of the Claydons Solar Action Group, “Battery storage sites should be on brownfield – they should not take away our ability to grow food.”

Campaigners say they are particularly concerned about fire risk from the batteries, after a major fire at a facility in Liverpool four years ago.

However, they are fighting a David and Goliath style battle.

Across the UK, giant battery installations are being proposed as investors seek to capitalise on Labour’s plan to decarbonise the grid with a wind and solar boom.



Pillswood Battery Storage Site - picture credit: openaccesgovernment.org

 

 Unfortunately for the green loons and the windmills and sunshine harvesters fan club these ‘battery farms’ are not a suitable solution for balancing the intermittency of renewables and most will be used to regulate the power supplied to the grid instead. Thus adding to the cost of renewables and doing nothing to power us on still cold nights.

Observant readers will have noted that it is dark for more than 12 hours each day in the UK winter. The scientists who have promoted solar power as one of the mainstays of our zro carbon electricity system seem blissfully unaware of this although most human being have been aware of the absence of sunlight during the hours of darkness since men first stood erect.

Likewise a report on wind power commissioned by conservation group the John Muir Trust (read full document here - .pdf ) reported that the technology was failing to deliver, with wind turbines only opersting at 21% efficiency over the coure of a full year. Wind industry sources queried this, claiming the true figure was 27%. Whichever is right it explaines why, on a daily basis, we have to fill around 20% of our energy needs by importing power via underwater interconnectors from France, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway. And with France's nuclear power stations being by far the biggest contributor i explains why successive UK governments have not been willing to stem the flow of illegal immigrants across the Channel by intercepting the boats and lorries and sending the undocumented arrivals back.

The main conclusions of the report are that wind power is not producing the promised average levels of power and "cannot be relied upon" when electricity is most needed.

To power the UK just for 24 hours in winter would require tens of thousands of Tesla’s largest batteries. And they would be no use. Firstly because the wind/solar downtime could be several days. But even if it’s only the odd day, or night, they’d still be no use because, once discharged, there would not be enough ‘excess’ sun and wind to recharge them in time for the next still night.

The whole thing is a con. It cannot work.

Lithium Ion Electric Car batteries have proven problematic; they spontaneousky combust more easily than Spinal Tap drummers and once alight are exceptionally difficult to put out. If one of these mega stations does get damaged and catches fire will it effectively take out a whole site and surrounding buildings? Is this a low rise Grenfell on our doorstep? I don't know but I would like to see proper evidence of safety. 

How long would it be before they have to be demolished and replaced? How do you recycle them? How clean is the process to make them initially and their replacements. We are aware that solar panels are life of 25 years and they don't recycle well. 

We know the batteries are not clean when manufactured and use rare earth materials not produced in a clean way. We know the wind turbines blades have limited life and cannot be recycled. This is not clean energy or very recyclable and without huge subsidies hidden or not would not be commercially viable. Smoke and mirrors and a pack of lies!

The usual poor journalism standards we have come to expect in stories related to science and technology multiply exponentially when applied to grid scale battery storage: the number of GW (always quoted) is irrelevant,  the amount of stored energy in GWh they can release is what counts. 10.6GW of battery storage may minutes or hours of useful energy to power homes and businesses so if demand is a steady 2Gw per hour the supply will hold up for five hours.

Quoting GW is meaningless. We need to know how many GWh (gigawatt hours) of power they could provide. So if you could provide 50GW (i.e. peak demand) but only 5GWh, you can only cover that peak demand for 6 minutes and then the lights go out. Lithium ion battery storage is NOT the answer to stabilising a distribution grid supplied by intermittent sources like wind and solar.

The number of batteries required to supply the UK's electricity needs for a week would run to tens of thousands. And you do not even want to think about what happens when one of said batteries goes into thermal runaway when you have a field full of the things.

We do not have a suitable technology for storing sufficient power to render intermittent renewables a reliable source of energy. And lithium batteries are certainly not it. 

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