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Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

theguardian.com

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Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#41

Post by AlexAndScripts »

FFP999 wrote: post #21
londons_explore wrote: post #3

Not stated in the article: There are very few places in the world with two large lakes, separated by a lot of height and not much distance. Wherever that happens, it is probably financially a good idea to build one of these. But that geography is really rather rare, so the rest of the world will probably have to use gas peaker plants (environment-killing) or battery storage (expensive).

Is there any reason that "lakes" (i.e. big holes) can't be dug where they would be useful for this purpose? (Update: for those who are downvoting, it was a serious question.)

If this were the 1950s I'm sure somebody would have tried nukes!

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#42

Post by FFP999 »

ajb wrote: post #25
FFP999 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason that "lakes" (i.e. big holes) can't be dug where they would be useful for this purpose? (Update: for those who are downvoting, it was a serious question.)

Well at least one of these was originally a quarry, so yes. But it would raise the cost a lot, if the excavate wasn't valuable as in this case.

It'll definitely raise the cost, I acknowledge that what I'm talking about isn't going to be a small project. I just wouldn't necessarily assume that it would raise the cost so much as to make this infeasible. To be clear, it's also not like I know anything about civil or power engineering.

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#43

Post by BoxOfRain »

mindracer wrote: post #31

Incredible place, while at Bangor university I did my dissertation on electric mountain and now spend my weekend hiking round Snowdonia. Lovely part of the world

I went to Aberystwyth and often went out into Snowdonia, particularly Bala. It's definitely one of the prettiest parts of the UK!

I really regret not learning Welsh while I lived in such a Welsh-speaking part of Wales.

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#44

Post by FFP999 »

AlexAndScripts wrote: post #41
FFP999 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any reason that "lakes" (i.e. big holes) can't be dug where they would be useful for this purpose? (Update: for those who are downvoting, it was a serious question.)

If this were the 1950s I'm sure somebody would have tried nukes!

I mean, when all you have is a hammer, and also your entire society is repressing massive post traumatic stress disorder, everything looks like a nail.

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#45

Post by sambeau »

bee_rider wrote: post #28
toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For comparison, you could build a replacement for Dinorwig with less than 1 quarter (12 weeks) of Tesla's single Megafactory annual output, and have it installed in less than a year, in any geography (assuming you're ready to run copper and pour slabs; storage enclosures can be installed in parallel, it's trucks, cranes, and human labor bolting them down). Timelines go down as battery manufacturing scales up. TBMs an…

A quarter worth of production from the Megafactory sounds pretty expensive. I mean somebody should make a giant battery backup, but Dinorwig does have a pretty big advantage in terms of existing-ness.

For load balancing, these days, there’s really no need for giant monolithic storage projects. Every renewables project can — and should be made to — have storage built in to it. Companies leave it out as it would make there price per MWh higher, and, for some reason, governments let them bid without it.

(Add storage to offshore wind and it suddenly looks similar in cost to nuclear.)

So, no one’s suggesting replacing pump storage with giant battery banks, just spreading batteries and other storage across the grid.

We still have no technology capable of storing TWhs though, and that’s what we need to remove carbon from our power grid.

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#46

Post by squigg »

sambeau wrote: post #36
squigg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are ever up in Scotland, you can still visit Cruachan - the sister power station at Loch Awe with a very similar design. I took my children there two months ago. They were as amazed as I hoped they would be! Visiting hours here: https://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/ If you are a Harry Potter fan, it's not far from Loch Awe to the famous viaduct at Glenfinnan as well. Details here: https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/place…

If you are a Star Wars fan, Cruachan is the location of The Empire’s base in Andor. As a Scot, who’s done a lot of hillwalking in the past (and been scared witless by airforce jets suddenly appearing over the brim of a hill) it was amazing to see tie-fighters whooshing across the Scottish landscape.

I did not know that - thank you, my son watched Andor - I'll get him to show me!

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#47

Post by londons_explore »

squigg wrote: post #35
londons_explore wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moss Landing, CA is the worlds largest battery. It is 3.0GWh, and has been operating 2 months. However, Dinorwig, UK is far larger at 9.1 GWh, and is 40 years old.

SSE are also hoping to build Coiri Glas in Scotland, which is 30GWh https://www.sse.com/news-and-views/2023/03/britain-s-largest... Cruachan 2 will take total site capacity to 1GWh https://www.drax.com/about-us/our-projects/cruachan-2/

> SSE’s £100m commitment to further developing Coire Glas comes as the leading low carbon energy infrastructure company awaits the UK Government’s decision on how it intends to financially support the deployment of long-duration electricity storage, as set out in last year’s British Energy Security Strategy.

> This could include the introduction by the UK Government of a ‘revenue stabilisation mechanism’ in the form of an adapted Cap and Floor scheme to support investment in long-duration storage. This would also be alongside broader consideration of how the electricity market, including the Capacity Mechanism and the Flexibility Markets, value the contribution of low carbon flexible assets such as pumped storage.

AKA... They're waiting for a government handout before they begin build. While they can 'buy low, sell high' and make a lot of money, they also want a government guarantee that they will make that much money. Payouts from that guarantee will effectively become an electricity tax.

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#48

Post by londons_explore »

cesarb wrote: post #24
londons_explore wrote: post #3

Not stated in the article: There are very few places in the world with two large lakes, separated by a lot of height and not much distance. Wherever that happens, it is probably financially a good idea to build one of these. But that geography is really rather rare, so the rest of the world will probably have to use gas peaker plants (environment-killing) or battery storage (expensive).

> There are very few places in the world with two large lakes, separated by a lot of height and not much distance. You only need one large lake (or a place which can be dammed to create one); the other one can be completely artificial, with no water inflow or outflow other than through the pumps/turbines. In fact, I think it might even be possible to make both reservoirs completely artificial, and fill them by pumpin…

Yes, but large artificial lakes aren't known for being cheap.

Pumped storage needs big lakes - a swimming pool on the top of a mountain isn't going to cut it.

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#49

Post by stephen_g »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11
londons_explore wrote: post #3

Not stated in the article: There are very few places in the world with two large lakes, separated by a lot of height and not much distance. Wherever that happens, it is probably financially a good idea to build one of these. But that geography is really rather rare, so the rest of the world will probably have to use gas peaker plants (environment-killing) or battery storage (expensive).

Keep an eye on Australia, Snowy 2 (whose costs are blowing out) [1], and battery uptake [2]. Based on cost decline curves of lithium scale utility storage, batteries will be cheaper by the time Snowy is commissioned. Battery manufacturing is ramping because every automaker is being forced to electrify, Tesla is preparing to build a second Megafactory factory for battery storage in China [3], and batteries can be inst…

Of course, Snowy 2 was a political project for which the planning was totally under-baked. It was a compromise set off by a centrist who was lukewarmly pro-renewable energy, but leading a party that was mostly dead against it and just wanted the Government to pump money into expanding fossil fuel ('coincidently' many of these MPs in the party have direct or indirect investment and interest in coal mining companies, oil and gas industry links, etc.).

There was always much better ways the money could have been spent, like investment into offshore wind, battery banks etc. but to directly invest in renewables and battery storage was and is politically untenable for that party. The Government has changed now to the party that doesn't have the same kind of direct fossil fuel investments, but unfortunatly the massive political donations from the resource industry and oil & gas to our politicians is bipartisan so they talk 'clean energy' while not that much actually changes...

Re: Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

#50

Post by uticus »

bee_rider wrote: post #29
uticus wrote: post #15

> So, after all those television-watching Britons go to bed, Dinorwig’s generators are run backwards. > It’s a remarkably efficient process, with about 75% of the energy available for reuse. Not an (hardware) engineer, so wondering: are turbines typically efficient running both ways? Or would a turbine in this scenario have tradeoffs compared to turbines that are designed for running in one direction only? The best I…

It couldn’t be much worse, right? Otherwise they’d have just installed another turbine facing in the other direction.

I have no idea.

I can easily imagine a turbine being a good chunk of the installation BOM cost and budget constraints saying price recoup in x years that extra parts doesn't balance against. And in this scenario, then no, another turbine facing the other direction would not be an option - though it is only efficient one way.

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