UKC

stored energy is a corner stone of a renewables based power system, so this is a good thing isn’t it?

A quick look suggests it's an excellent scheme. Hope it goes ahead. I've seen the nimby objections elsewhere; we lose far far more by not doing this stuff.

Stored energy is a good thing as you say, but aren’t we better better off going all in on battery technology?  Gravity is a really poor way of storing power when you only have ten or twenty or even a hundred meters of altitude to play with, and all the possible hydro schemes in the UK are nowhere near what we need for storage for a renewable heavy grid.  Go for the approach that has an economy of scale (batteries) rather than the one replete with bespoke costs for each site (hydro).

2022 saw countries around the world suffering power restrictions due to low water levels from drought; and 2023 is off to an exceptionally poor start with regards recharging water levels in the island of Great Britain after our 2022 drought.

Yep, we need this. It doesn't look to be actually changing all that much. We lose a bit of land to it but not an enormous amount. 

Yes, the building process will be disruptive and I can't imagine I would fancy climbing there during that process, but it's not the biggest deal in the grand scheme of things and we need the storage.

What about all the damage caused by mining to get the materials to make the batteries?

The coming move to aluminium battery chemistry massively lowers that damage.  It’s far more abundant and readily recycled than lithium.

I’d rather see hydro storage scheme money going towards accelerating this battery chemistry, not least because you can’t put a lake on an electric vehicle, and because hydro storage schemes are only ever going going to be a strict minority compared to battery storage as batteries ramp up.  Denorwig is 9 GWh.  In January 2023 there were 0.68 million BEVs in the UK.  With 40 kWH/car (low estimate) that’s 27 GWh in batteries or over 3 Denorwigs.  This is at the beginning of the move to BEVs.  The scheme the OP linked is tiny in comparison, but the costs of such concrete heavy civil engineering works in the highlands - massive.  Use the money to accelerate less environmentally harmful battery tech instead and that will have a net better environmental impact.

I don't think Scotland is particularly struggling to recharge water levels, should be ok! That's not to say we haven't had very dry spells in recent years which could be problematic, but it rarely lasts all that long here. We do manage to recharge pretty well!

I'd be interested to know how the carbon calculations stack up against mining lithium etc . More broadly, I think breadth and depth in energy supply is very clearly needed

What battery tech were you thinking of?

I drove up Woodhead on Wednesday and every reservoir was full to their brims.

Also, pumped storage is less vulnerable to drought. 
 

(notwithstanding earlier points about the location of this and other recent PSH scheme proposals, in some of the highest rainfall catchments of the country)

Nationwide it’s not good as of Dec 22, and it’s been unusually dry since.  Twice as many reservoirs/groups below normal as 12 months previously, and many are further down.  River flows are also down and the rest of Feb looks very dry.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

Not just carbon, but ecological damage.  That’s very site dependent so hard to compare “fairly”.

Agree re: diversity of supply, but hydro is only ever going to be a very minor part of that in the UK, and each new scheme is diminishing returns even before considering effects of climate change, which have been hitting hydro globally of late.

Aluminium chemistry.  The sooner we get there, the less harm done by lithium mining.  Accelerating the move from the active R&D pipeline to the mass production of batteries is what stops widespread harm from lithium mining.

Vehicles need batteries, hydro storage doesn’t change that.  I’d rather see the money go towards massively less harmful-to-mine-and-produce batteries which solve 100x more energy storage needs than hydro.

In terms of capacity (900MW / 33GWh) and hydraulic head (300m) it's actually very comparable to the Nant de Drance project which surprised me a bit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nant_de_Drance_Hydropower_Plant

Unfortunately, unlike at Emosson I doubt that the access roads will be hidden underground in tunnels but otherwise it looks pretty sensible given the availability of wind power and transmission lines in the north.

it’s all about the mix. Dinorwic (around 10GWh) is the equivalent of say 200,000 Tesla model 3 battery packs in a station, or distributed across EVs on a smart grid, and if you don’t want to fry them as you deep cycle, let’s say 500,000. That’s a lot of material (even copper) which is cheaper to mine than recycle. Nobody has discussed compensating owners for degradation yet. Depending on the duty cycle those battery packs are going to get jet lag from being replaced often.

My guess is we have a mix of all sorts of energy buffers across pumped, battery, cryo, hydrogen etc. until batteries are superseded by wind, hydrogen infrastructure and small modular reactors. I was lucky enough to host all the Rolls Royce early brainstorming design team meetings for SMR, but even though it’s now being developed it’s still a while away.

Bigger than I thought!  Thanks.

In reply to paul_in_sheffield:

For renewable generation, I agree.  

For storage, you want a diversity of sites for resilience and to minimise losses, but diversity of tech is less important.  You either have storage, or you don't.  You still want some diversity in the implementation of battery tech to protect against safety recalls etc.  

I wasn't suggesting using the cars as storage, I was showing that the rate of battery production is eclipsing what we can do with pumped storage, even in the early stages of BEV adoption.  Non vehicle, stationary battery based storage is growing.  By coincidence an article is just out on Ars after I posted noting that nearly 10 GW of static battery capacity has been added to the US grid in the last year.  Basically instantaneous response times compared to a 30s spool up on stored hydro.

Looking ahead, pumped storage is very niche in terms of locations globally, and won't provide the levels needed for a fully renewable grid even in the best suited countries.  I'd rather see the money go in to advancing universal solutions, and in terms of mitigating impact of the rapid rise of batteries, accelerating aluminium chemistry in to production winds down lithium mining sooner in the growth of battery tech.

On cars-as-storage, I agree that there's a lot that needs to be worked out.

Batteries are so simple to integrate anywhere compared to alternatives; do you think they'll ever really go away now?  With the gains to be made in optimising cell structure and aluminium chemistry, somewhat bananas energy densities could be achievable.

I also think batteries are a key to a nuclear heavy grid - they solve the 24 hour cycling vs baseload problem of a nuclear grid well before they can solve the problems of a renewables heavy grid needing a week or so of grid scale storage.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/us-will-see-more-new-battery-capaci...

Interesting, thanks for posting.

Not sure I'd class the A86 as "excellent road links" mind! Hope they didn't just look at a map, see it's an A road, and assume that'll mean 2 lorries can actually pass each other ...

Obviously storage of some sort is needed, but almost anything would be preferable to the horrible hydro scarring of more glens - the scale of the destruction in the west highlands from hydro schemes is appalling.

FTFY

To be fair, the Highlands were destroyed a long time ago with deforestation, sheep farming, deer overabundance, grouse estates etc. Nothing natural about the landscape!

True, but all those other things, while undesirable, are not actually downright ugly (to my mind anyway) in the way that hydro scarring is. 

You seem to be implying that, because the landscape is not natural, it cannot still be appealing or even beautiful and we should stop caring about it at all. 

What is your point?

Maybe not as ugly, but probably worse overall for the environment. Once the hydroscheme is built and settled into the landscape, it is fairly inert. It doesn't stop vegetarian growing like all the sheep and deer do, or the burning of grouse moor etc. 

Obviously, there is an environmental impact, but it's shorter term, unlike the current ecological disaster zone!

No, not at all, just that this is an important addition to our green energy resources and that matters more than some visual impact. 

Really? I hardly notice hydro infrastructure. Even the dams sort of blend in, to my mind.

Really? I find that extraordinary. Almost every reservoir just has a huge ugly scar all the way round from the changing water level. The difference between glens with a natural loch (or no loch) and glens with hydro schemes couldn't be more glaring. I agree the actual dams can have a sort of aesthetic appeal. 

I think the hydro destruction of the west highlands was a terrible tragedy and a huge price to have paid for the power generated.

The site  is the one of the Wild land areas - 

https://www.nature.scot/doc/wild-land-areas-map-and-descriptions-2014

It's hard to see how the construction of the tracks/roads  up to nearly 800 m would be subtle or unintrusive even after they have settled in

Once flooded, the glen is lost forever, sheep and deer or no sheep and deer, and the reservoir will never have a natural shore line with the vegetation and environment that brings.

As I said, if there are alternatives, then they would be preferable to the ugliness and environmental cost.

Next step - a huge pump storage scheme by putting a dam across Coire Ardrair. Can't be many better candidates.

Or maybe Coire Mhic Fhearchair. Or The Allt a'Mhuillin. I think the point is that everyone (probably even girlymonkey) will have their limits on what special places they are happy to see trashed. The same probably goes for windfarms - I've yet to see a windfarm which really bothers me, though there are certainly places (the Cairngorm plateau, to take an extreme example) where they would, but there are lots of examples of hydro schemes which sadden me.

The Allt a'Mhuillin is already dammed/damned.

Yes, a tiny intake. I was thinking something more like Cruachan. Perhaps one end of the dam at the top of the first pitch of Centurion.

The Cruachan dam is only 46m high so it would need a lot more to threaten Centurion. For that you'd need at least 200m from the lowest point which goes beyond most dams. 

Neither the Allt a'Mhuillin nor Coire Ardrair have the right topography for storage but Cruachan is an interesting question. There seems to be an application to add a second turbine system to increase the power to 1GW but without adding any storage (currently 7GWh) which seems rather odd.

https://www.drax.com/about-us/our-projects/cruachan-2/

Given the topography and geology a 100m+ double arch should be possible and and could increase the capacity to at least 30 GWh if not more. Obviously it would have an impact on the environment but it's in an area where this has already been accepted and a lot of the infrastructure is already in place. 

As always it's the question of finding a balance between not doing too much damage and increasing the potential for renewable energy. 

There's a phrase used in construction, " You cannot make an omelette without cracking eggs."

Everything blends in over time, even without trying to landscape a site after the construction phase.

On the Ben , if you drive north to the NF car park , you might notice 4 or 5 penstock pipes coming down the hillside on your right, I think they winch a land rover up inside for inspections. Might be more than a tiny intake.

Obviously I was not being entirely serious, but my point stands that everyone will have limits on what they would be prepared to see trashed.

Loch Cluanie, Loch Mullardoch, Loch Glascarnoch etc. etc. etc. have shown absolutely no signs of doing so in the 50 years or so I've known them.

Aren't they the pipes from Loch Treig? The ones that power the aluminium smelter?

Yeah but inertia though...

We're already paying plants to use their turbines as big flywheels.

https://www.theblackoutreport.co.uk/2020/03/06/inertia/ 

Moving away from spinning things makes (not just) me nervous. If we go all in on batteries we'll have to come up with some fairly exotic and house-of-cardsy control systems.

There’re already 0.5 GW scale batteries on other grids in the world. I can’t think why the control would be particularly complicated?  Microgrid systems have been using line frequency to signal demand and modulate power sources for over 15 years.  If you think about the problem as emulating the behaviour of a flywheel on a 3-phase induction motor it’s not that complicated…. Perhaps I’m missing something… 

Where I see it getting complicated is where we move to a future with mostly loads that pull their desired power regardless of grid voltage not ohmic loads, and where there’s little mechanical inertia left from turbine halls.  At that points it’s more house-off-cardsy.

Perhaps we agree here - but the problem isn’t in the next decade and doesn’t limit deployment of pumped-hydro style batteries now…

Yeah, there's nothing inherently wrong with lots of battery on the grid but when the amount of synchronous generation is too small compared to the size of the grid (like it will be when we have mostly renewables and tons of batteries), there's basically nothing to limit how fast the frequency can change. That's the problem. Because everything is designed to "NOPE!" and disconnect, for good reasons, in the event of a rapid frequency change.

Designing a system to react to frequency changes isn't that difficult, it's designing a system that keeps the rate of change limited that's hard unless you have lots of big heavy spinning things.

With ~50% renewables we're already at the point where NG has contracted plants to use power to keep rotors spinning so it's definitely going to be a problem sooner than later. https://www.drax.com/press_release/drax-begins-world-first-power-system-sta...
No denying it's a nice problem to have tho.

Maybe a positive is that it gets an upgrade?

If only that spoilsport Murray hadn't got his way we could have had a fantastic hydro scheme in Glen Nevis. Perfect location for a small dam holding back a huge loch.

I'm sure I remember something being proposed around the Castle Ridge area (and not that long ago either).

I think this would be a real shame if this amazing beach is lost. For one, I wouldn't be able to shout at the BBC when they (as they do every year) say that the beach on Loch Morlich is the highest beach in the UK. 

It's probably a minor issue to most people but when a place that is one of my favourite flask coffee stops disappears I'll be very sorry.

To anyone who says it's not that big a deal, well, maybe not to you, but it is to me. 

Mullardoch wasn't looking too shabby one late May.

I agree with your sentiments. I've walked over all the hills around there and that beach is special. My first visit was on a backpack over the Ben Alder and Aonach Beag hills. We passed the beach several times subsequently in the following years gathering Munros in a fairly haphazard fashion. Finally, after a gap of several years we walked along the lochan itself to gain the track crossing north of Geal Charn. It was a lovely sunny day and we could see and hear climbers on Ardverikie Wall. That was over a decade ago and I'll quite likely never return but the thought of a hydro scheme there makes me sad.

Thanks for putting this out there.

Considering the location of Loch Laggan, with its power station, I am surprised that another dam is required so close by - has the required supply within that area increased so much?

Pumped storage Hydro is about national level demand, filling in the gaps in supply when the wind isn't blowing so we don't have to rely on gas.

We will need a mix, and hydro has it's place. High capacity which can be stored for a long time and released quickly.

Energy storage is the next big thing and has been brewing for the last couple of decades. At the moment it's the wild west of plots, schemes and hair brained ideas*

There are a shitload of hydro (and other) schemes in various stages of "development", varying from a plan on paper to a costed design. These wee companies and organisations will usually develop a scheme so far in the hope that they can then sell it on to a another bigger organisation that'll actually build it. They all invariably massively up the numbers to try and make their proposition look attractive in some kind of who's got the biggest MW competition, even if it's patently clear that it's unlikely to be cost effective. Theoretically the hydraulics suggest you could achieve these power outputs, but these puddings never suffer from a lack of egg. 

If, and it's a big if, this scheme gets picked up and funded it'll almost certainly be scaled back in size. 

*a scheme thought up by your hairy brain, not your hare.

I’ve never seen Mullardoch that ‘full’.

Where does nuclear fit into that equation?

One nuclear reactor could power the whole of Scotland - or is that another dirty fuel?

The dirtiest, albeit in small amounts. Also expensive, and the locals tends to get a bit twitchy,.

It does provide a constant output, that's the big up, but there are big drawbacks.

One nuclear reactor or several hydro schemes, plus windfarms etc. - I know what I would rather have

For generation, yes, I agree.

I’d like it if someone could spell out why we need a mix of storage though.  Hydro is slow to spool up and low power compared to similar sized battery systems.  I agree we need a diversity of sites and suppliers for robustness but as far as I can tell vs big battery banks (see the Ars link I posted above, they’re already real and rolled out elsewhere), hydro is vastly lower energy density, has less potential for growth, has worse round trip efficiency, has lower output powers per unit stored energy and has similar or worse long term storage as batteries and slower recharge rates.

There’s no synergy here.

When you say similarly sized systems I presume you mean in terms of generation capacity? i.e. MW

The advantage of hydro over battery is the total amount of energy which can be stored. For comparison, this scheme is planned to store 33GWh of energy which compares very favourably to the '5+GWh deployed storage' of something like tesla megapacks. That is, this single hydro scheme would be able to store 6.5x as much energy as the total deployed capacity of every tesla megapack deployed so far, and over a much longer lifespan.

Winscar reservoir is still low.

Well, which is it?

No.

Hydro is a mature technology and stationary grid scale batteries are only just ramping up in terms of production and economies of scale.  It’s not a good time to directly compare them.

2021 saw almost 300 GWh of packs for EVs alone made.  That’ll be going up year on year.  I didn’t quickly find a number for stationary packs but that’ll be rising too.  Look ahead to aluminium chemistries replacing the lithium ones and before long a 30 GWh hydro scheme is small fry.

https://www.adamasintel.com/record-battery-capacity-deployed-in-2021/

Stationary packs can have a much longer life than vehicle ones but I’ll agree it’s shorter than a hydro plant.  I don’t know how the refurb vs maintaince costs stack up, but I do know that batteries are becoming more and more common and pumped hydro is going to remain niche.

I agree we should be pushing battery technology hard, but I think diversity in energy storage is a very prudent goal to aim for.

Energy storage is a huge and growing problem. Pumped hydro is a mature, well understood technology which can meet some of that need relatively quickly. Historically new battery chemistries have proved pretty fiddly to scale up so while I think it makes a lot of sense to invest in them (because the potential pay-off is huge) I think neglecting other forms of energy storage and betting that the R&D in batteries will play out smoothly is a very risky strategy.

Maybe maybe.  We’re lucky to have sites suitable for pumped storage, but they’re pretty drastic transformations and not cheap.  You’re right that it takes time to scale up the manufacture of any given battery type, but we don’t “bet” R&D scale up on manufacture will happen, we make it happen by resourcing it as you say.  They’re all solvable problems, we understand the class of problems and why it takes time and investment to solve them.

Resourcing the scale up of batteries will have far more payback than pumped hydro ever will because of all the other applications for batteries.

In terms of diversity of solutions, smart demand management goes a long way, but it’s easier to build some dams…

I believe it is permanently reduced in depth now. There is a fair bit of ground that was clearly once flooded but has been above water for many years now.  

Even more so with Loch Monar.