Power storage.

[saveasteading]

There is a  proposal for even more pump storage using Loch Ness. 

Apparently it already rises and falls 50mm.

 

installed capacity of 1.8GW with a stored capacity of up to 36GWh, providing 20hrs of storage

 

1. Can a boffin advise how much energy this is, in relation to a power station / town size/ number of wind turbines or other convenient comparison? 

 

2. Should there be a levy payable to  Highland Region, for exported power?

 

[ProDave]

Scotland generates most of the renewable wind and hydro power yet we as customers pay the highest prices.  SOMETHING has to change.

 

I say we have enough wind farms and there should be no more until the major hills in England like the Cotswolds, Chilterns, Berkshire downs, South Downs etc have the same windfarm density as we have.  Build the windfarms nearer where the power is used rather than 400 miles away with more pylons to take the power down south from here.

[JohnMo]

Just looked at 12:56, our generation mix is 77.3% wind, and 22.7% gas. Yet the whole price is governed by gas wholesale price. It's a scandal.

 

6 minutes ago, ProDave said:

SOMETHING has to change.

+1

 

7 minutes ago, ProDave said:

until the major hills in England

Too many NIMBYs, with too much say... But not enough education to have a voice, in my humble opinion.

 

Fill all available landscape with wind and PV. No issue with farmland sharing with PV, they can coexist in the same field.

[Tony L]

I'll agree with you @ProDave.  While we're levelling up, let's also deal with the problem of Scotland having far more than its fair share of MPs.  Each Scottish MP represents far fewer constituents, on average than, their English counterpart.  

 

 

[JohnMo]

40 minutes ago, Tony L said:

Scottish MP represents far fewer constituents

And there are Scottish parliament ones and UK ones, so two in each area. Same in Wales also.

[MikeSharp01]

53 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

No issue with farmland sharing with PV, they can coexist in the same field.

No so easy with Arable crops though! 

[saveasteading]

45 minutes ago, Tony L said:

Each Scottish MP represents far fewer constituents

Please show your source.

[saveasteading]

5 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

No so easy with Arable crops though

Not that difficult to steer around a big column surely? Or a pylon.

[Iceverge]

1 hour ago, JohnMo said:

Just looked at 12:56, our generation mix is 77.3% wind, and 22.7% gas. Yet the whole price is governed by gas wholesale price. It's a scandal.

 

+1

 

Too many NIMBYs, with too much say... But not enough education to have a voice, in my humble opinion.

 

Fill all available landscape with wind and PV. No issue with farmland sharing with PV, they can coexist in the same field.

 

Agreed too many NIMBYs. 

 

There's lots of people who are healthy, have access to information, are in no immediate personal need of economic development and have lots of time on their hands. (People who need a house or a job don't complain, when people used to work until 65 and die at 70 it didn't happen). 

 

Farming can take place with PV but it's limited as the crops are effectively solar powered themselves. 

 

Grazing sheep at very low stocking levels is possible for example. 

 

I think locating PV on the south slope of the hills that have turbines would be an appropriate use of grid infrastructure. 

 

Of course it's beneficial to have it near the population. I think intermittent targeted power rationing for those who complain the most would be appropriate. 

 

[Iceverge]

3 hours ago, saveasteading said:

Can a boffin advise how much energy this is, in relation to a power station / town size/ number of wind turbines or other convenient comparison? 

 

 

About 4 times as large as Electric Mountain in Wales. 

 

It could store the energy of about 300 normal wind turbines running flat out for 24hrs. 

 

It could power London for about 8hrs.

 

 

[JohnMo]

29 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

No so easy with Arable crops though! 

Easy peazy - Vertical panels spaced to get tractors and implement through. Do it Japan and other places, so why not here? Almost zero crop loss. PV density not that great, but you can do over 1000s of acres.

[saveasteading]

31 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

Not that difficult to steer around a

Sorry, that was unnecessarily glib. 

 

Turbines on fields.  Solar on industrial roofs and walls. Let the plants grow.

 

There is a theoretical problem with solar on older or agricultural roofs as the additional wind load can be huge and they aren't designed for it.

Perhaps Government could reduce the factor of safety, solely for solar. 

[Tony L]

11 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

Please show your source.

That'll teach me.  I'm supposed to be working, so I can afford to build a house.

 

The source was my head - just a vague notion I'd formed having watched so many Scottish MPs speaking in the House of Commons (watching them on telly, that is - I've never been there) & looking at those constituency maps that are in newspapers around election time.

 

So, if Google is to be believed (& very often, it isn't). mid 2023 England pop = 57,690,300, Scotland = 5,490,100.  From 650 constituencies, 543 are in England & 57 are in Scotland.  That gives 106,243 constituents per English constituency & only 96,317 constituents per Scottish constituency.  So your average MP representing a constituency in England is looking after more than 10% additional constituents when compared to the average MP in Scotland.

 

& I wouldn't dare suggest that there may be more than 10 times as many Scottish born MPs representing English constituencies than there are English born MPs up in Scotland, because I might have to spend the rest of the day Googling to support that claim. 

 

Now, I must concede., although this bias in Scotland's favour is significant, it's not quite as bad as I thought & probably less than the skew in wind turbines.

 

If you or @ProDave want to tell me I've got my facts wrong, I'll agree with you, in the hope that this will encourage you to continue to help me build my house.  It's got off to a bad start, & I need all the help I can get.

 

 

[saveasteading]

 

42 minutes ago, Tony L said:

significant, it's not quite as bad as I thought

Because, perhaps,  that is the implication intended by some sources with a southern  readership to keep wound up.

 

And that is population, not registered voters. That's homework for later. Don't worry, you will find the numbers to be equitable.

 

Next consider whether a widely dispersed constituency should have slightly more representation because of more variable circumstances...by which i mean are the currently similar figures too much in favour of the concentrated urban populations? 

 

 

For what it's worth, I've lived in many areas of the UK.

The most insular is the SE, with few having ventured north of home counties, or having any interest there.

It's very common for southerners to think that Scotland can be driven through in 2 hours even with the country lanes winding through the heather.

And the peoples of the Midlands feel as ignored by that there London and the powers that be, as do Scots.

 

What was the question again?

 

 

[Tony L]

20 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

 

Because, perhaps,  that is the implication intended by some sources with a southern  readership to keep wound up.

 

And that is population, not registered voters. That's homework for later. Don't worry, you will find the numbers to be equitable.

 

Next consider whether a widely dispersed constituency should have slightly more representation because of more variable circumstances...by which i mean are the currently similar figures too much in favour of the concentrated urban populations? 

 

 

For what it's worth, I've lived in many areas of the UK.

The most insular is the SE, with few having ventured north of home counties, or having any interest there.

It's very common for southerners to think that Scotland can be driven through in 2 hours even with the country lanes winding through the heather.

And the peoples of the Midlands feel as ignored by that there London and the powers that be, as do Scots.

 

What was the question again?

 

 

 

You're right, you're right, although I thought they were still constituents, even if they're below voting age, but I'm probably wrong on that too.

 

Hartlepool, where my family is from, is definitely more insular than the SE, & in a good way: most people have a far greater understanding of local issues there than they do down here in Surrey.

 

The question was: Can you help me build my house, please?  My nasty Southern builder has done me over & I'm struggling to decide on the extent of remedial works (see my recent posts).

[SteamyTea]

5 hours ago, saveasteading said:

installed capacity of 1.8GW with a stored capacity of up to 36GWh, providing 20hrs of storage

 

1. Can a boffin advise how much energy this is, in relation to a power station / town size/ number of wind turbines or other convenient comparison

Large, land based, wind turbines are, to keep the sums simple, about 1.8 MW, so to match the same power as Loch Ness, you would need 1000 if them, all running at full power. Now turbines don't often run at full power, usually around 40% on average. So around 2,500, to match the 36 GWh generation.

An average house uses about 3 MWh a year.

Assuming a fairly event power spread thought the year, that is 

About 4.4 million houses.

 

Something does not seem right somewhere.

[saveasteading]

15 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

you would need 1000 of them,

And that is surplus power to pump the loch up the mountain.

Looks as if many a Ben will be turbined.

This probably links with the current (I know) plan to build a new power line south, skirting the Cairngorms,  from Nairnshire to the Lowlands.

 

I've been in such a pump storage tunnel during construction. The scale is bogglingly huge.

Of course it may be that the plan is to pump water up over many days of plenty, to use in extremes or whatever earns most.

ie sell more cheap power at imported gas prices.

[joth]

6 hours ago, saveasteading said:

Apparently it already rises and falls 50mm.

 

 

The key info of the proposal is it's moving water between Loch  Ness and Loch nam Breac Dearga, which sits 475m higher than Loch Ness.

https://www.glenearrach.energy/post/glen-earrach-pumped-storage-hydro-facility-consultation

 

At that height my rough calc is you need to lift 20 million tonnes of water to store 30GWh of energy (before efficiency losses)

((30000 MWh) / (475 m)) / (9.81 ((m / s) / s)) = 2.31772091 × 10¹⁰ kilograms

 

This equates to a 40cm rise/lower in the level of Loch Ness, which seems too much to be viable..

(23 177 209 100 litres) / (56.4 square kilometers) = 41.0943424 centimetres

 

 

Totally agree with the other points that Scotland does not need more wind turbines, but ISTM pumped storage would help make best use of the existing turbines and reduce strain on grid bottlenecks so probably a good idea IF the environmental damage of building it can be justified.

 

 

Edited March 24 by joth

[ProDave]

The traditional usage was pump water up whenever there was surplus and let it down again to generate to fill in the peaks, often for short periods like the late afternoon peak.

 

If longer term storage is intended like to to fill in when there is no wind in the middle of winter then it may need to generate for a week, so would have to be at a very much lower power.

 

I wonder how the Calley canal will cope with the rise and fall, some parts of Loch Dochfour approaching the top lock at Inverness are not that deep and the overfall over the weir keeps the River Ness flowing down through Inverness.  Pump too much out of Loch Ness and boats may get stuck and the River Ness through Inverness will dry up.

 

I am sure this has been thought about.......

[saveasteading]

8 minutes ago, joth said:

475m higher than Loch Ness.

That's quite a pump isn't it? 

Best not swim near either end.

 

I wonder if that flow change is noticeable downstream. You wouldn't want it during storm conditions.

 

That now partly answered by PD.

Edited March 24 by saveasteading

[joth]

3 minutes ago, ProDave said:

The traditional usage was pump water up whenever there was surplus and let it down again to generate to fill in the peaks, often for short periods like the late afternoon peak.

 

Yes, my reading of the small amount of info on the page I linked above is it's diurnal, not seasonal storage.

 

[saveasteading]

4 minutes ago, ProDave said:

sure this has been thought about...

But it is very complex. Will the powers (I know)  communicate?

 

Ness remains the second deepest Loch even when 100mm is borrowed, but the murky bottom may be disturbed, along with creatures.

[saveasteading]

4 minutes ago, joth said:

it's diurnal, not seasonal

Which could reduce the total number of turbines required. 

[joth]

12 minutes ago, joth said:

This equates to a 40cm rise/lower in the level of Loch Ness, which seems too much to be viable..

 

Maybe not - this article mentions 73cm drop in Loch Ness if it was filling all three(?!) proposed schemes at once, which puts it in the right ballpark, and much higher than I imagined.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67875061

 

4 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

Ness remains the second deepest Loch even when 100mm is borrowed, but the murky bottom may be disturbed, along with creatures.

Had to scratch my head for a moment, but yes the depth of Loch Ness is irrelevant, other than to say a drop in height of 50cm is a small fraction of it's 250m depth; if you live near the shore you'd surely notice the effect.

 

Very real risk of sucking up some creatures and redistributing them to other Lochs though!  My mind races back to the awesome (in the literal sense) "glory hole" spillway at Lake Berryessa.

 

[ProDave]

Loch Ness is the largest volume of fresh water in the UK, largely thanks to it's depth.  It is not the largest surface area of fresh water though.

 

You have to be very hardy to swim in the loch, it's only about 6 degrees and does not vary much.

 

73cm drop might require some dredging in Loch Dochfour to maintain navigation depth of 3 metres, and adjustment of the weirs to maintain some flow into the River Ness.

 

For context, Loch Ness on a good day.