UKC

https://www.parliament.scot/get-involved/petitions/view-petitions/pe2109-ha...

Can you explain what you mean by non-renewable? A big constraint on renewable wind generated electricity is when turbines have to be stopped when there is insufficient grid capacity or demand on windy days. Pumped storage allows the surplus energy to be held and later transmitted when there is sufficient grid capacity/demand so off setting the gas fired generation that would otherwise be needed.

Please can you also provide links explaining how exactly this would threaten wild salmon.

Thanks

Non not none!

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=320506030951728

I'd suggest if there is any merit in this campaign that they get better witnesses with some decent expertise on likely (as opposed to possible) serious impacts. It was rather 'nimby bingo' except missing anything on culture wars. Pump storage hydro looks essential, yet some of the upper loch potential choices do look very worrying due to large water level fluctuations in evidenced rare habitats.

I thought pumped storage meant renewable ?

The arguments seem to be gut feelings with no actual science. At least the video doesn’t claim that the pump storage is non-renewable, unlike your post headline! Variations of level height of 72cm when the loch is as deep as 230m! Where are those “alternative locations” referred to? As well as being a climber I’m a sea kayaker so value the lochs and mountains highly. Come back with some actual science 

Thanks Hughee for posting - just to add some points to this pumped hydro is not a renewable, it does not require community benefit to be paid to compensate for biodiversity loss and impact on local communities. If you look at the full scope of the planning applications there are huge impacts for nature and biodiversity loss through the removal of peatland to create the dams. For example, the loch kemp storage plans to remove ancient woodland ( unprecedented ) and to remove some 300 football fields worth of peat bog. In context the many schemes on Loch Ness that are proposed and going through the energy consents unit are way in excess of what is required to store the energy. I am not suggesting pumped hydro isn't a good idea but 5 schemes in planning on one loch is over saturation. The Loch Ness fisheries has produced some great information about the loss of salmon smolts ( already at critical point) as the water levels will change significantly. In summary, the schemes are not renewable as they require huge amounts of energy to pump massive amounts of water, times that by 5 schemes and the impact on biodiversity loss ( of which there is no requirement to mitigate), no requirement to pay community benefit in compensation too. 5 schemes on one loch may have devastating and irreversible ecological consequences.

'In the case of Loch Ness, if all existing, consented or proposed PSH schemes were approved, the level of Loch Ness will vary by up to 1m daily.' 

https://petitions.parliament.scot/petitions/PE2109

thats pretty astonishing if correct

You have completely (deliberately?) missed the point. The “huge amounts of energy “ required is renewable energy that would otherwise be wasted at times when the grid or consumer demand can’t accommodate it. The stored energy is then released at a time when it can be accommodated reducing use of fossil fuel generated electricity.

huge amounts of energy required to pump the hydro 

What figures to you base this on? How much energy is “the energy”

From https://carbontracker.org/britain-wastes-enough-wind-generation-to-power-1-...

The report reveals that on more than 200 occasions in 2022, bottlenecks in the transmission system meant National Grid ESO had to pay Scottish wind farms to stop generating zero-carbon power and pay gas power stations in England to increase output to compensate. This added £800 million to consumer electricity bills and increased greenhouse gas emissions by 1.3 million tonnes.

 This will only get worse with ongoing expansion of off shore and on shore wind generation. 

I’m interested in how would you and others in the Highlands weigh the perceived environmental impact of pumped storage on Loch Ness against that of massive expansion of electricity pylons crossing the highlands? (In practice we may need both to minimise carbon emissions)

And huge amounts recovered when the water is released. Is there something you don't understand about the concept?

There are two new HVDC links being built mostly off shore from Scotland to northern England for precisely the problem you note.

 Not my field but I’m interested to understand why this is a problem when many river levels can vary by this amount due to rainfall fluctuations, and sea lochs by much more due to tides?

Also not my field but my very casual observation is that freshwater lochs don't vary much either up or down. If rivers are suddenly high it takes much longer (days or weeks?) to raise the level over the large area of a loch and usually not by much.

Unlike life in a freshwater loch, sea life in the shallows has evolved to survive the tidal range twice a day.

We need this scheme, and lots more transmission capacity, and more windfarms, and nuclear and also big efforts to be more efficient in our energy use. All of it sadly has costs and downsides. Getting to net zero CO2 isn't easy but we have to do it or we will ruin our planet and the consequences of that would be much worse.

I thought 1m would be a lot for a lake/loch however 1m in windermere seems to be in the normal range

https://check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk/station/5220

(i don't think rivers or sea lochs are  comparable)

1m depth with Loch Ness area of 56km is 56 million cubic metres.

Cruachan storage capacity is 10 million cubic metres.

So if several times greater volume than Cruachan then a 1m variation is plausible.

Probably not daily unless renewables produce a reliable daily surplus.

Volume may be multiple of Cruachan but energy storage a smaller multiple as I assume was Cruachan chosen so long ago because it's better than almost all other locations.

The "up to 1 m" estimate for water level fluctuation in Loch Ness is highly misleading. The impact report linked in the Petition gives numbers for the loch's surface area (56.4 km^2) and the working volume (4.9 x 10^6 m^3) of the only new pumped storage scheme that is beyond the vague idea stage. Dividing volume by area gives a depth change of rather under 9 cm.

What you need to understand here is that pumped storage  schemes are neither renewable nor non-renewable. They do not produce any energy at all, and are not intended to. They are a way of storing energy - in effect a large battery - which we will need much more of as we move towards 100% renewable energy, because we cannot switch on and off wind power or solar power, and the energy which pumps the water up to the upper lochs is that which we cannot use when there is a very large amount of  renewable energy being produced. Then, when there is a shortage of renewable energy (like today when there is no wind and no sun) the water is released down to the turbines on the shore of the lower lake. 

If you want to be really picky, you might say that not all the energy used to pump the water up can be reclaimed because the pumps and turbines are not 100% efficient, but I believe the loss only amounts to about 1-2%. 

hey Kevin not at all understand it very well and have read all the extensive consultations around it as it directly impacts a lot of our highland community and nature loss is a primary concern as many of the statutory bodies have pointed out and objected to.

I think it best people take a look at the extensive reports and the science surrounding this. Not sure if you’re aware that one of the proposed developments is by the largest multi national corporations in the world, I’d be interested to hear what their green credentials are.  
Anyway good to leave it there. 

Nature loss, most uplands are over grazed and void of much diversity? 

What matters is how 'green' this investment is, not the company overall. It's a voter choice that uk taxpayers won't pay sufficient tax to have these as state owned infrastructure, so just like other forms of power generation it is private investors.

Have ever been around the tourist trip in Dinorwic? Or if you ever climb in the Moelwyns on a weekend, you can see the pump storage station help cook sunday roasts.

This is energy that would usually be lost. Like when they have to stop some turbines when the grid is too saturated.

1-2%?

I thought it was a lot more than that.

Pretty sure you're right. A normal hydro turbine wouldn't get anywhere close to 98% water to wire efficiency. Think pumped storage varies a bit more but usually in the 70-80% range.

This calculation fails to take into account fluid dynamics. A loch that size doesn't instantly re-level itself when a bunch of water is extracted from one point - the water takes time to flow into the "hole" you created when you removed some of it. Someone with a hell of a lot more fluid dynamics knowledge than me would need to do a calculation for this and, hey, maybe it's not significant, but I wouldn't be surprised if a mega-project like this could result in 50cm or more of level drop if the water was being vacuumed from a single point - especially if it was close to the shore.

In reply to Rog Wilko:

Agreed, pumped storage is not "renewable" or "non-renewable" because it is not electricity generation, it is electricity storage. Some of the posts in this thread sound like people arguing over whether a rock is male or female.

But the loss is a quite a lot more: 15-30%

This, I'm afraid, is a problem. There is a very strong inference that because this thing is being done by a large company, it must be bad. And made with the explicit admission that you didn't do any research into the companies green credentials before making the assertion.

I don't know whether the proposals are a good idea or not, or how they might stack up vs alternatives in a "everything is a bit bad but we need to pick the least worst alternative" scenario. But saying "it's bad because a big company is doing it" is the sort of facile argument that makes someone you are trying to persuade more likely to disregard other points you have made which might actually be valid.

The petition asks for a halt or pause. It doesn't say stop . There is a  reasonable cause for a pause   because it provides an opportunity for a viable assessment  on the acquatic ecology which is not possible at the moment. There are  ad hoc and staggered planning applications  for PHS schemes submitted which will have  a cumulative effect on the same body of water . This  cannot be assessed on a case by case basis {as each application is submitted separately.}

A better way to think of it is as a battery rather than power generation.

We will never be able to fully utilise renewables without an ungodly amount of energy storage.

I don't think you do

It doesn't seem like you have 

Probably best.

Get it built. Asap.

My apologies, I stand corrected. It’s just a figure I had in my hea£ and didn’t check. Mea culpa.

Someone said above that 'we need' these schemes. Great, let's have lot's in the Lake District and Peak District. 

It is possible, but many of the lakes in the lakes are really man made reservoirs for water supply to the north west, not sure how messing with their level would impact that. Red tarn could be dammed higher and a hydro plant between there and Ullswater would have a decent height difference. 

You don’t seem to understand the basic physics of pumped storage?

Seems to be a remarkably common trait amongst those who are opposed to it. Literacy, not so much.

I suspect that with Loch Ness being much wider than the pipes that would pump the water in, there would be no appreciable bottleneck effect and the water would rise throughout the loch almost at the same time.

There are also locks at either end of the loch, leading to their respective rivers, so whilst the loch is natural, its water level is already impacted by human activity. 

My standard of literacy is extremely high. So as the French say, fek you. 

I do.

If you do, why suggest areas like the Peak which clearly don't have the required topography?

One issue is that insects and such like by lakes haven't evolved for rapid fluctuations in level so they die off with knock on implications down the food chain.

As a response to the UK government attitude that Scotland is remote, so it doesn't matter if all the stuff that spoils the landscape is dumped here. Windfarms, hydro, nuclear etc. I think the decaying nuclear subs are still in Rosyth. No-one at Westminster seeming to give a shit about them. If they were in the Thames it would be a different story. The Peak might not be ideal, I guess that's why you commented on that and ignored the Lake District. I'm sure there's plenty of viable places there.

Oh, and also, for a bit of a wind up.

I watched a presentation from a colleague in my old job about the decommissioning of the subs. Planning the work has been remarkably challenging for various historical reasons (a common symptom when decommissioning old stuff as the industry has historically been abysmal about planning for decommissioning for both civil and defence applications), however they still needed to be left to cool down for an extended period of time after defuelling to reduce activity to more manageable levels which enables decommissioning to be done with acceptable levels of risk around radiological safety.

​​​​

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My position on stuff like this is usually that I am not interested in living in a museum, especially if it is a treeless desert. However, Loch Ness and its massive catchment can only take so much manipulation and there could end up being too many masters to serve. 

In Inverness in recent decades, we have occasionally been treated to the ridiculous spectacle of a town built on 300m of gravel flooding. The patio-isation of the surrounding hillsides continues to increase our vulnerability! There is a consultation about new weir control at Dochfour later this month and it will be interesting to see how they take account of the various pump-storage proposals.

You might want consider there's a massive reservoir over some villages in the peak, big quarries, it's hardly been left alone. Or the lakes in the lakes which are actually man made reservoirs... etc etc as I said previously very few of the 'lakes' would work that well because they already have a role.

This is nothing to do with the UK government 

Fair enough.

You know you can check things, right? Then you'd know, not think.

Everyone's entitled to their opinions, but it would be great if people would do a quick search to verify what they're basing them on.

It's The lake in the lakes. You'll thank me one day in a pub quiz 😉

Re Nuclear sub decommissioning - there’s more up to date stuff, but here you go:

https://www.navylookout.com/project-to-dismantle-ex-royal-navy-nuclear-subm...
 

More rotting ( and hotter ) in England than in Scotland

I know, just north of Keswick. That's what happens when I type early in the morning. 

It's surprising how many of the mountain tarns are man made, or at least added to. 

Sorry, but that is incorrect. They are all lakes, whether in The Lakes or in Scotland (or anywhere else) even if their names are things like Windermere or Loch Ness.

When is a pond big enough to be a lake, if a body of water is man made is it a reservoir? 

The Reservoir Region, doesn't have the same ring to it, I'd prefer Cake District. 

How many trees make a forest? Yet, despite such unanswerable questions we all agree lakes and forests exist.

Is a reservoir a lake? Not a question I have ever considered before. I'd guess it is. Maybe if a dam creates a body of water where there was none before it might not be. But what about a dam which just raises the level of an existing lake a bit?

Mill pond, but that's mainly related to their use, when some like stickle tarn were dammed for a water supply. Don't know, there might be some special hydrology term. 

Clockwork isn't a viable storage mechanism for excess renewable generation.

Ummmm:

https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/research-news/modern-twist-on-clockw...

But don’t freshwater lakes vary quite a bit according to season and weather anyway? Can you think of a particular insect, amphibian or bird species that might be particularly sensitive to moderate water level changes within repeated limits?

Depends on the habitat, which doesn't especially apply to loch Ness (I think, a resident expert might know better). You can have larva, nymphs that live in water or mud flats, then grow into insects, dragon flies, etc.. birds could nest in the shallows, water level drops and a fox or badger takes their eggs. These type of things would likely have been considered in an impact study, Loch Ness is a different beast compared to your average small pond/loch/tarn. It's depth alone makes it unique in the uk. 

Yes, Loch Ba on Mull varies by around 2m, but it is a small loch.

Loch Lomond varies by at least 1m.

You do know that there are wind farms across the whole UK and plenty of nuclear installations in England and Wales too?

Babcocks are getting on with decommissioning and dismantling the old nuclear submarines - Swiftsure first. https://www.naval-technology.com/news/uk-planning-to-expand-submarine-recyc...

15 old nuclear submarines are also stored, and to be dismantled, in Devonport - in England, as well as the 7 in Rosyth. 

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here.

Yes, pumping a huge amount of water uphill requires a huge amount of electrical energy, that's the whole point. You're converting surplus electrical energy (from nuclear and renewable sources) into gravitational potential energy which is easy to store and re-convert.

It's a huge and remarkably efficient mechanical battery. The huge amount of energy put into raising the water is later converted back into a huge amount of electrical energy for consumers when demand outstrips clean supply** or as pricing dictates*. What matters is how much energy can be stored, the bigger the better really. How efficient it is at bi-directional energy conversion and therefore whether another type of storage might be a greener, better investment. And how long the asset will last vs other storage technology. In all regards, highland pumped hydro tends to score very well.

*here we do run into more interesting questions around unintended consequences in a free market but that's an issue for all energy storage.

**this is the 'green' bit. Without the pumped storage, when demand outstrips the supply of clean energy you need to either (or both) shed load or increase supply. Load shedding historically has been bad, (blackouts, industry shutdowns) but done right it represents virtual storage and is an under valued possibility particularly as our roads and home heating go electric. It isn't the whole solution though, it's a temporary bridge, we still need stored clean energy and a lot of it.

Pumped storage may not in itself be a renewable energy source (the clue's in the name, storage) but it is currently a key component in a clean, robust power system. One we're lacking.

jk

No, I don't know of specifics. It was something I read  while back. I think it was the speed of level change from hydo that was significant. 

Perhaps this

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/66/7/561/2463266

Thank you, I'll have a read and think about this. 

I lived in Rosyth for 6 years until recently. Using those things in my head that give me optical input, I saw submarine shaped objects in the docks. I didn't test them personally to make sure they weren't facsimiles, but I'm confident in thinking they're the nuclear subs that the locals, the sailors, and the local media tell me they are. I was there last year and they were still there. Have they been moved since then?

Are you sure? Clockwork systems store a lot of energy, and have lot's of applications. The radios made by Trevor Bayliss are a good example. I had a clockwork charger for my phone years ago.

Hilarious. They're really on the ball aren't they? It's only taken 40 odd years to get around to it, if they actually do. There's been lots of false starts and false promises over the years. It reportedly costs £30 million per year to maintain them. Devonport is far away from London to be considered remote by Westminster politicians. Tow the subs up the Thames and park them outside the houses of parliament. 

And what happened to the 1st Devonport sub to be dismantled? They brought it to Rosyth. 

Before anyone says it, I'm not saying big clockwork machines can power the National Grid. But alternative options should always be considered. 

I think water depth is likely a factor when considering submarine bases etc.? 

Nobody is claiming this is a quick process. Part of that is the necessary time after de-fuelling for radioactivity to decay to an acceptable level. Of course it costs money in the meantime to monitor and maintain the hull structure.

You must know that towing them up the Thames (or any other river into a city) is a stupid idea, rather than putting them in a secure naval base with nuclear support facilities. Even ignoring that, the draft is far too much for the shallow Thames in central London and the conning towers are too high to fit under the bridges.

No, Swiftsure was decommissioned in 1992, after a planned refit was cancelled, and has been stored at Rosyth since then. The first of the Devonport submarines to be dismantled will be Valiant, in Devonport.

Rather than just making things up based on your prejudices you could check.

Having read through the thread, I'm amused by Scottish people asking English people to sign a Scottish petition, and then blaming them.

I shan't be signing.

T.

There are good reasons for not signing this petition but the above isn't one of them.

An Australian living in Scotland posted the link. The main advocate for signing lives in Scotland but their profile doesn't say any more. One Scottish person has had a bit of a go at perceived Westminster attitudes. Others who live in Scotland or have done so have argued against signing.

I didn't say that was the reason I wasn't signing it.

T.

Ok, in that case, check your assumptions.  

My assumptions are also fine, thanks.  You might not be amused by the same things as I am, is all.

T.

Maybe there should also be petitions in favour of planning applications, so decision makers have a truer feel of sentiment, arguably linked to your polling address, so they can sense what is nimby, anti or for any green development etc.... it would create a more informed decision. 

I live around Loch Ness. Applications for Pumped hydro storage facilities using Loch Ness as a lower reservoir have been  submitted over the past years and another {Glen Earrach} is due to be submitted for planning in 2025.

I signed the petition because

. The Highland Council are in the unenviable position of having to deal with planning applications  without undue delay or they will incur fines.I learnt through community council meetings that, by companies submitting planning applications at substantially different times, {as is happening} , there is no opportunity to thoroughly consider their effect in totality. I signed the petition because this provides an administrative chance to rectify this administrative problem and to fill a gap in the assessment process . The culmulative effect of all these pumped storage schemes on one body of water {and a whole aquatic ecosytem to the  sea} needs  properly assessing and that needs time.

In a carbon crisis and also in a bidiversity crisis, careful placement of PHS schemes is of geat  consideration. Wild salmon are not the only environmental issue on Loch Ness/river ness and the sea.  Nature.Scot and Sepa have  submiited objections about  the Loch Kemp PHS Scheme on Loch Ness,currently under planning consideration.Given the gaps in the assessment processes to deal with this rapid gold rush of applications. I thought I could not afford  to Not sign this petition. A petition can  act ,in my view,  as a necessary democratic way  to speedily force a debate on this important issue in our scottish parliament. I thought this issue really deserved a procedure to properly control an industrial revolution . A  petition is a way to do this.

It's hardly an industrial revolution given the number of dams constructed 40 or 50 years ago. Even pumped storage has been built in the hills of wales and Scotland for 30 plus years. Wild salmon won't be spawning in Loch Ness, only transiting and the locks on either end are the bigger issue. All the articles about endangering the river ness's catchment are nonsense. If the water in the new dam and the loch simply switch places, then the flow out to the river ness doesn't change, it will depend on the current factors just like now. 

This scheme on its own will do very little to solve the huge problem which is being created by an over-reliance upon wind energy to decarbonise electricity generation. The average UK load is just over 30GW. This scheme will store 30 GWh. Periods of 10 days or longer with light winds are not uncommon. Therefore one would require several hundred schemes the size of this one for complete security.

Almost every valley in the U K will need to be dammed to provide enough storage t cover a winter high pressure system. I have old pressure maps with zero isobars over UK in January, thus no wind and no waves and minus temperatures.

I think that's simplistic. There will clearly be system wide implications of multiple hydro schemes, which are huge pieces of infrastructure with wide effects. A pause to consider the combined effects seems reasonable to me

That said, I think a lot of the opposition is misguided and not well informed, as we saw above. 

FWIW I live in Inverness so pretty local.

The main benefit of pump storage IS to ride out peaks in demand (rather than supply) of a few hours or so. This is of massive benefit in not having to start up a gas fired station to meet peaks, and using night time wind to meet daytime demand.

This site provides an interesting view of how the UK’s generation mix responds to fluctuations in demand.

https://gridwatch.co.uk/

Maybe 1 pump storage facility off the same body of water constructed at 5 year intervals so that impact is monitored. Logic says they could all be storing and releasing at the same time, rather than staggered. 

Certainly that's how North Wales facilities work, they need relatively short notice to pre spin turbines before water is released for the classic millions of kettles put on at the end of coronation street type demands. 

So what? Your point is we need lots of storage so we shouldn't build storage? Ok...

Jk

Pumped hydro provides valuable/essential short term energy storage to meet peak demands. Like you say, our geography doesn't have the potential to scale it up enough to meet multi-day deficits in renewable energy. That will need something like power>hydrogen>power or LAES (eg see https://highviewpower.com/technology/ ). But that doesn't mean that pumped hydro isn't needed. Pumped hydro is efficient and a fully established technology. We can't afford to not use it to the (sadly limited) geographical potential we have.

I think my point is fairly obvious. It would be foolish to trash large parts of the Scottish highlands in a futile attempt to solve the problems caused by excessive wind generation. A better solution is required.

Which is?

Trash? Hyperbole

 A solution is required to the problem of providing electricity during a prolonged period of light winds. A solution to that problem will very likely also solve the problem of providing for short term peaks in demand.

Using excess wind generation to store Hydrogen and than burning that Hydrogen when extra electricity is required seems to me to be the most likely solution to this problem. If we were to be going down that route, I can see no real reason for any expansion of pumped storage.

What is the energy loss in creating Hydrogen, then burning it to generate power again? 

Quite substantial, but that's not relevant. If there is more wind generation available than required than one might as well use the excess to create Hydrogen.

Which is?

Magic doesn't work.

Jk

How about using the large amount of water in Loch Ness for cooling a nuclear power station, saves trashing the highlands, removes the need for those pesky windturbines and we could use all those left-over submarine bits as well.

The maximum efficiency of fuel; cells is 85%.  Efficiency of conversion of hydrogen to electricity is 60%. That gives a maximum cycle efficiency of 51%.  The cycle efficiency of pumped storage is 80%.  Hydrogen takes up a lot of room to store, or more practically needs energy to compress it into high pressure storage tanks so the actual efficiency net of compression energy will be a lot less.  The investment in fuel cells, hydrogen storage, compression and generation is massive - hydrogen's small molecules makes it prone to leakage so high standards of engineering are necessary.

The major constraint leading to waste of wind power is lack of grid capacity so the energy would need to be stored near the point of generation - so would you be happy with these industrial plants being built in the highlands?

There are small schemes to convert surplus wild energy to hydrogen at the point of origin, eg on Orkney but this is used to supplement local heating boilers etc so not an answer to decarbonising electricity.

Your wish for a better solution (that does not exist) is straight from the NIMBY playbook.  

Maximum 51%, but quite a bit less is energy is required to compress the hydrogen for storage

We can create hydrogen? Why haven't I heard of this scientific breakthrough?

Efficiency, it's arguably the most important. 

No, use the surplus to create the maximum future return (within reason).

😀 'creating' maybe the wrong word! 

Not just that, hydrogen electrolysers need a steady state of operation to work efficiently.

Matching intermittent renewables with "green" hydrogen isn't really the panacea it's purported to be.

It maybe be able to be further developed to be more flexible, but at present this kinda screws the economic case even further.

Molecular hydrogen is “produced” from other molecules; “created” is not such a stretch for describing that process.

There is a slight of hand in jimtit’s post between atomic hydrogen (which is rarely created or destroyed) and molecular hydrogen (which is often created and destroyed by chemical reactions).

I say “rarely” as atomic hydrogen can also be created through β- atomic decay which emits a proton, which will rapidly go on to grab itself an electron from somewhere and become a hydrogen atom,

I've given you a 👍 for that for the waffle of the week award 🤣🤣🤣

You tell me.

You know what I meant!

As I pointed out originally, pumped storage would only provide the necessary storage capacity if one were to build an unfeasibly large number of plants. So what is the solution? 

The blindingly obvious point is that each MW of pumped storage will deliver a proportionate reduction in climate changing pollution, which is a very good thing.

I want lots of wind power and as much pumped storage as possible to be built as quickly as possible. I agree  that there is still a problem with prolonged low wind periods. The key thing is that every bit of fossil fuel we can avoid burning now means less CO2 in our atmosphere from this moment on. We need to take those gains.

Anyway, my pet solution for an electrified zero-C UK energy system (that I'd be keen to hear a rebuttal of) would be to have eg 100GW of offshore wind, 30GW of normal simple nuclear (eg boiling water reactor) and a lot of LAES hooked up to use the waste heat from the nuclear to boost power output. When it was windy, air would be liquified and stored in cryogenic tanks (as used for storing liquid natural gas). When it wasn't windy, the waste heat from the nuclear would boil off liquid air to boost the power output of the nuclear by 2.5x. There has been an "on-paper" study of linking LAES and nuclear power. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2013.08.077

I just saw this website too https://cryospain.com/cryogenic-energy-storage-nuclear-power-plants

Hi Kevin, I think your calc for hydrogen efficiency is a bit on the optimistic side, maybe in the range 15-40% so pumped hydropower is at least more than twice the efficiency of hydrogen from renewable sources, realistically 5x without even factoring in water treatment prior to electrolysis.

Anyhow, there’s never a free lunch and robust energy systems are always a mix of sources. I think hydrogen will find its main application in transport and to a slightly lesser extent grid. Pumped storage is proven tech, especially supporting nuclear base load and will inevitably increase. 

I don’t disagree with your figures, I was being deliberately optimistic in my response. I don’t have faith in the “hydrogen economy” . Hydrogen is a lot less efficient route from wind energy to vehicle motive power than batteries, and without any infrastructure yet in place. There is a lot of talk about using hydrogen (green or blue) to decarbonise natural gas use. In practice a limited  amount of hydrogen could be blended with natural gas without requiring substantial modifications to domestic, commercial or industrial gas using plant, however switch to 100% hydrogen would require bigger snd less leaky pipes everywhere and around 65% downrating of industrial plant etc

Build as much as we can. 

Are you deliberately playing moron now?

You can of course just produce methane from the hydrogen and pump it straight into any natural gas application at will since that's what natural gas is anyway. The conversion (hydrogen and CO2 combine to make methane) is easy, well understood and currently at about 75% efficiency. Bit of a backwards step but if that's what people want.....

That’s an interesting point, and arguably a more sustainable alternative solution to carbon capture?

But the powers that be for the industrial clients I have worked for have decided that making their plant “hydrogen ready” is box ticked in their roadmaps to being carbon neutral, even though this wouldn’t be realisable in practice. 

The world already produces 120m tons of hydrogen a year mainly from splitting methane so that's an easy target to save a lot of CO2.

Pray tell, where does all the carbon go form the methane that is split?  

Spoiler alert: CO2 into the atmosphere!

Err yes, that's the point of the conversation. We can make the hydrogen direct and save the CO2 emissions from splitting natural gas.

This is a point I always trot out when people start talking about "creating" hydrogen for a new market of green hydrogen. 

If we wanted to replace all of this "grey" hydrogen with green, we would need to dedicate 80% of the 2023 renewable energy generation solely to H2 production.

If we can crack low cost green H2 production that can cope with variable capacity factors (duty cycles) then it could work in some niche cases as a balancing output for wind etc. but I'm not buying the hot air that it's going to be the big saviour of the fossil fuel industry and a major contributor to c02 reduction. We'll see. 

Maybe green steel? But I guess that still needs steady state inputs... 

You have to do more than that. In a Hydrogen economy, you have to produce it on-site pretty much as needed because you cannot successfully store or transport it because the molecule is annoyingly small and finds its way out of anything either through diffusion or flaws. 

Not as small as muonic hydrogen though!  Some interesting research going on in making it much smaller using the intense E field of a pulsed laser to make it look more muonic.  One of the more fringe approaches to fusion perhaps… 

Not really relevant to hydrogen as a storage system in a renewable heavy grid.  In which I share the prevalent skepticism on this thread.

Pumped hydro does seem to be the least damaging way to get the storage we need.  

Ah, I was 180 out of line with understanding.  Yes, we can do that, and waste several times more renewable energy than is converted into H2.  

Really? In Germany we already have an existing hydrogen pipeline network scheduled to expand to 9000km by 2030 and storing it is easy enough, they keep cylinders in stock at my local industrial gas dealer, hell I can buy a 10l (200bar) cylinder on Amazon today delivered on Wednesday. They are the red cylinders on the bottle truck. It's a commonly used industrial gas and in some new medical treatments. There's even a filling station for vehicles 20km from me.

That cheapo plastic liner keeps it in tanks really well.

Except that, as  I pointed out at the start of this, to get the storage required you would need to build an implausibly large number of pumped storage stations. If we just keep building more and more wind turbines, some other method of storage will be required.

You wouldn't burn the hydrogen for power generation, this subjects it to thermal efficiency limits etc, you would instead use something like a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell which is a lot more efficient.

The round trip efficiency from electricity> hydrogen> electricity is quite low though (I can't remember the figures and am likely far behind on the current capabilities).

Edit: Kevin Stephens provided some optimistic figures up thread to demonstrate that even when you treat it favourably it's still not a great solution.

Theee is no one solution, particularly as there is no single problem. It's clear there are going to be a multitude of approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and hydrogen production from excess renewable electricity generation is just one. The theoretical efficiency of converting that energy into a more storable and moveable medium is irrelevant when the primary energy input is free, if you have already built a wind turbine or a solar array and have to turn them off when there is an excess then who cares? For example why aren't thermal stores mandated in all new-build houses to re-charge when renewables are in surplus, I had one in my previous house which held 500kWh which would heat the house for about a week, it may not have had the theoretical efficiency of a heat-pump but if the generating capacity is going to waste then so what?

Another aspect is why convert in two directions, energy use is primarily non-electrical anyway and a large amount of this can be covered by utilising other energy carriers than hydrocarbons and without electricity thus achieving the goal of zero-emissions, hydrogen just happens to be one solution and due to it's nature one of the more convenient with current and foreseeable technology.

I'm not sure it's not a solution., the Royal Society view it favourably. There's a fairly detailed report and the authors do have some credentials.

https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/low-carbon-energy-programm...

However, I still support the pumped hydro schemes, as they can be implemented relatively quickly and are pretty efficient. I don't believe we have the luxury of time to wait around for another large scale storage solution (though we should be planning these now!). There is a climate crisis but it's also increasingly worrying in terms of national security and economy, and most people seem to have their head in the sand.

I'm not disputing it being a reasonable solution for some applications (electrification of trains on routes which can't financially justify fitting OLE, heavy transport on road both come to mind), I just don't think it's particularly versatile, or great, solution for supporting grid continuity with short term load variations.

For long term storage supporting grid continuity following infrastructure damage I view it much more positively.

Making up a low carbon power grid requires lots of different technologies, some will likely be quite niche.

The UK's energy supply is now fragile. North Sea petroleum is being strangled by excessive windfall taxes, so that we are having to import the shortfall, including very expensive LNG from America and wood chips from N America. Indeed, we have got our heads in the sand.

"Assuming the Labour government sticks to its licensing pledge, what does the future of UK oil and gas production look like?

Even if the new licenses are drilled and result in discoveries that are commercially viable for development, they would only serve to slightly slow the North Sea’s long decline. UK production would remain at just a small fraction of its peak."

https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/north-sea/556891/whats-at-stake-for-u...

Energy voice is a trade mag based in Aberdeen.

Most of our imports are from Norway, and for gas, as 'clean' as it gets. We should aim to replace that LNG and wood chip with renewables as a priority.

Yes Drax wood chip is an outrage as Private Eye remind us fortnightly, needs ending ASAP.

I went on the Cruachan tour and heard they consume 50kW to keep one turbine spinning (continuously?). If there's spike in demand the spinning turbine has enough angular momentum to stop the grid frequency dipping much and provide short term grid stability until other capacity can start up.

I loved the idea that inertia is has a commercial value. 

Yes, Cruachan was the only facility that bid into National Grid's auction for inertial storage to cover brief dips in frequency, like the one that blacked-out London a few years ago. 

Not exactly my job but I can have a go.

The 'better' storage solution: Complicated. Diverse. Evolving. And not all about storage. Also I think smaller than you think it needs to be, we need to weigh managing the consequences of occasional shortage against the cost of ensuring that can absolutely never happen.

Having said it's not all about storage, we do need a lot more storage and barring significant technical changes that's going to be pumped water for a while yet. The problem we in Britain have is our landscape is poorly suited plus it's not going to be anywhere near the regions of highest demand so we're also looking at interconnects to trade storage. These have the side benefit of increasing supply diversity, reducing the need for storage. It's expensive but necessary, the only robust argument for being truly stand-alone would be a defence case and there the argument can be flipped on its head.

So what is there beyond pumped water to increase medium term green energy reserves/resilience?

This breaks down basically into supply side measures, demand side measures and storage, tackling one alone doesn't solve the problem.

Storage:

Pumped water is currently king and personally I think it will remain so for dedicated grid scale storage, at least until there is a solid second-life industry behind traction batteries and 2 or 3 orders of magnitude more flowing through recycling centres. At that point I think we might start to see former coal plant sites with their HV infrastructure and cheap space coming back into into use as batteries.

There was an opportunity that has mostly now passed to look at modifying coal thermal stations, utilising existing high value and capacity distribution, generation and cooling equipment for use as thermal batteries (renewable energy stored as high grade heat in vast tanks of rock) with a side of fossil gas burning as an emergency fall back. We might get back to this idea, we might not, the ability combine the storage with emergency burning has appeal.

Low grade thermal storage, particularly where a legacy of mining leaves opportunities may well prove tempting for seasonal storage and improvements to district heating efficiencies. I think this will remain niche though we may see it in newbuild housing as a cheaper alternative to exceptionally high grade insulation.

Mechanical storage, flywheels, drop weights, buoys etc. I don't see these scaling up so we find individual huge examples at network nodes. I do wonder, if the economics/policy around curtailment change, whether we might start to see localised storage built into the masts or anchorages of turbines, particularly offshore. In deep water there are long drops available, there is the possibility to store compressed gas or to safely house high energy flywheels. All of which could make for cheaper interconnects, higher utilisation factors and limited reserves.

Synthetic and bio 'fuel'. Here we get to touch on your hydrogen idea. I think synthetic fuels, 'chemical storage' in one form or another will find a niche and grow to significant scale, particularly for industries which are otherwise very difficult to wean off energy dense fuels like aviation. I just don't see them becoming viable for strategic reserves except perhaps as a fuel of last resort, depriving the aviation sector when absolutely necessary since it is non-essential and is to a degree able to tanker fuel. Scientific advances could make a fool of me here, this would be super useful and it clearly is possible, nature has a big lead on us in conversion efficiency, we may eventually be able to claw that lead back without diverting land from food production which would change the case.

On the fuel theme, a significant fraction of our rather hard to decarbonise shipping is dedicated to moving fossil carbon around, by weaning ourselves off it and producing what we do still need locally we eliminate a big chunk of that demand (we could file this under a number of headings but it's a neat fit with synthetic fuel thoughts). Our recent wind powered past also points toward a more efficient possible future for shipping.

I'd personally tend to think about compressed and straight cryo gas systems in the same way I do synthetic fuels, they may find a niche where the right infrastructure and opportunity exists but I don't think they'll scale.

Demand side: this breaks down into the transparent or even productive measures, those we don't notice or even benefit from. Then those that are required as a last resort, the economically damaging but necessary if we are to better than the blackouts of old.

As our roads and homes electrify there exists a growing, privately held and distributed storage asset. some commercial innovation and regulation is needed here to realise its value but given the ability to forecast supply and demand we can pump up those reserves in times of plenty, topping off cars, bumping home thermostats up and freezers down, topping off hot water tanks then delaying and prioritising demand as supply falls. There is also the possibility for those individuals possessing significant excess reserves to sell it back rather than merely managing their demand.

Beyond this we get into compensating heavy consumers for reducing or offsetting their normal demands beyond the invisible into the disruptive during very lean times, potentially also in the period before allowing strategic reserves to be accumulated. The key to making this demand side management work is planning, policy, regulation, scaling of existing incentive schemes and above all, really good forecasting.

Supply side: Diversity.

Nuclear currently needs to be in the mix at significant scale. I wouldn't count on distant* hopes like fusion, I think we need to extend the life of what we have and focus hard on replacing it with proven, simple safe solutions with the cost engineered out and the end of life engineered in.

*if there is real surprise innovation then great but colour me sceptical, particularly that the large scale tokamak designs will ever compete with alternatives without vast subsidy.

More of the same, wind and solar, particularly sun tracking or off axis solar to broaden the daily solar peak.

Britain is almost uniquely blessed with three major out of phase tidal races. Whether we exploit them will probably boil down to whether the technically easier and cheaper options prove sufficient. I doubt I'll live to see a major tidal barrage built but perhaps turbines/foils.

We've touched on continental connections when thinking about storage but we also need to look at the intercontinental options. That could be cables moving electrical power, it could be shipping bottled energy of some form or other from regions where it is more plentiful or reliably available. I'd guess it'll be a little bit of all of that.

Other: It's the forecasting and politics.

I think we also need to be thinking very hard about plan B, assuming whatever we do will be too little too late. Looking at deliberate climate modification and toward managing the inevitable disruption and mass migration that already baked-in climate change will drive.

So there we go, yes I do think pumped hydro storage is essential and that we should develop our prime locations and improve our access to others' storage resources. Yes I know that has costs but so does doing nothing. No I don't think it's simple. No I don't have all the answers, not even close. I don't think anyone does, not least because I'm not even really sure we have all the questions nailed down and while we work on it everything changes around us anyway.

jk

Systems designed for this express purpose can have less parasitic draw and more dense energy storage with higher speeds and composite rotors.  Best burried in the ground I think.

Finally a way to monetise national scale bureaucracies!  

Natural gas is 'cleaner' than other petroleum fuels, but not by an enormous amount. Mass of CO2 generated per energy output of oil, LPG (largely propane), and NG (methane) are roughly 73, 66, and 56 g/MJ respectively. Of course, hydrogen would be 0 ("as clean as it gets"), if you ignore all the energy that goes into its production. I am all for replacing fossil fuels by "renewables" ASAP, but it is going to take time. ("Renewables" in inverted commas because they consume a whole lot of non-renewables, including energy, in their production.)

Is that not spinning reserve, or spinning standby in old speak, rather than inertial storage?

I thought spinning reserve doesn't have any inertia to speak of, on a hydro SR it's still taking energy from the headpond. 

I think I'm correct that Dinorwic uses air to pre spin, but I don't think it's continuously spinning, just 5-10mins before it's expected to be fully utilised. 

The Norwegian gas we get via the pipeline has by far the lowest production emissions, that's what I was talking about.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67945281

You want to use north Sea oil to generate electricity? We now have a fleet of CCGT power stations and the old oil fired power stations have been decommissioned. And I really don't think the economics work out, the price of oil is high and out of our control, most North Sea oil is exported.

The trouble is we (meaning the UK) and many developed countries are offshoring a substantial amount of our CO2 output to China etc. The CO2 measurements are Mauna Loa show that we (mankind) have had very little success, so far, in altering the overall trend of CO2 emissions.

Whilst climate change is a major problem, it may be eclipsed by a very unpleasant scramble for affordable energy supplies. By unpleasant, I mean war.

You are right about the low production emissions of Norwegian gas, but is that such a big issue?

No, I think North Sea oil should be sold to help finance the energy transition, much as Norway have been doing.

Clever approaches to increase efficiency, such as CCGT, are obviously one way to go. As far as economics are concerned, it is worrying that UK electricity is already amongst the most expensive in the western world, in spite of these clever measures.

I completely agree. On that basis I say transition is the right thing to do for a net importer of oil and gas, which we are.

Well, it's good we've got access to it by a pipeline...... things could be worse! 

North Sea oil is sold, we make money off it. It's just a dwindling resource.

Yes, we need to do something about it.

The transition is not just the right thing to do (regardless of the seriousness of climate change): it's imperative, because we will probably run out of the non-renewables in the next couple of decades. I am very concerned with how badly the transition is going.

No, just inertia. See Drax website for a quote, I can't seem to paste on this Android tablet...

Having spent 3 hours freezing my nuts off changing the knives and the pick-ups on a harvester so we could silage this years sugar-cane hybrid I feel I should point out you have missed bio-mass as a means to reduce the variability of renewable supply.

Dinorwic pre-spins in air, using electric power, to save having to accelerate the water turbine by gently increasing the flow, It can go to full power in 11 seconds with the pre-spin and the valves opening as fast as possible. That's if I remember correctly...

My recollection of a visit to denorwic as a kid was that the assembly is spun up only on demand and so doesn’t normally store rotational energy.

The system peatmead’s mentioned could fairly be called a “spinning reserve” or a source of inertia on the grid frequency - that inertia coming directly from the mechanical inertia of the grid synced rotating assembly.

Both a synced rotating assembly and an on-demand hydro scheme feeding from a head pond can provide intertia to the grid frequency.

Some confusing terminology.  The next big thing is “digital inertia” with grid scale batteries acting like the stored hydro, but with almost instant response time.  I’d distribute these in hardened underground bunkers near big Hv transformer sites to give a redundant power source for anti-drone microwave weapons as well as for digital inertia.  For reasons I hope are clear.

I would really like to know what it is that I have said that the downvoter disliked. I am not upset in the least by the down vote, just curious to hear the down voter's point of view.

Your suffering is appreciated

It was alluded to in the synthetic fuel bit but it was rather turning into an essay.

Jk

Infinitesimal.

It never ceases to amaze me how the (hugely technocratic, engineering biased ukc population) favour such ideas as using every incline in the Highlands /Lakes/Wales as a token energy source rather than alternatives. Is the point of the dislikes to the previous post by Point of View that we SHOULD build an unfeasibly large number of plants, for some tiny CO2 reduction? Seems bonkers to me whilst I whilst many continue to fly everywhere for pleasure?

Yep.

https://www.drax.com/press_release/drax-begins-world-first-power-system-sta...

Grid inertia is the next big problem to solve with the move to renewables. 

Used to be all our generation was synchronous, i.e. it was all made by huge generators spinning at some multiple of 50Hz, so when people switched things on they just slowed down a tiny bit until the plant throttled up to compensate. 

If we went to 100% renewables and batteries feeding the grid through inverters you don't have that buffer, instead you have lots of distributed electronics trying to decide their phase relationship to the grid. Anyone who doesn't think that's worrying hasn't understood it. And before anyone who hasn't read about this chimes in confidently professing that we should just design some clever system to replace inertia computationally, it really, really isn't simple, nor necessarily a good idea. So inertia as a service is a thing, and we'll need plenty more.

Stupid question: why is 50hz so vital? Does 45 or whatever break everything?

No, but a low frequency is a sign that demand is more than generation, and vice versa. 

The grid is managed to average 50Hz over the day. Used to be that clocks used it as a reference. And if you want a good Wikipedia rabbit hole, start here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/european-clocks-six-minu...

Edit: 45Hz probably would break stuff, yes. Things would start to disconnect and potentially cause a grid collapse way before it got to that. https://gridwatch.co.uk/frequency

WTF! Slow clocks from weak electricity lead to.diplomatic incidents!

Other way round

Regardless of climate change we need more of our own power generation for energy security and most of these locations we call natural aren't. Take the pump storage in the moelwyns, it's positively attractive compared to the slate spoil. 

The usa is unstable now, the ME, Israel/Iran, China/ Taiwan, Putin.... we really could be surrounded by carnage quite quickly and relying on importing energy from mainland europe and shipping gas here is madness. We are arguably a decade too late.

It's not infinitesimal at all. The change from basically no storage to having some storage will make a massive difference.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people think there's some noble cause in leaving things the way they are right now, as if they think nothing has been changed by mankind before. Like "untouched" is a synonym for "how it was when I was born".

When the universe ends, there won't be a trophy for the civilisation that decided suddenly to stop moving dirt around in its second millennium and leave its problems unsolved and wipe itself out instead.

We absolutely should be putting relatively unobtrusive pipelines down the hills where they would help decarbonise and secure our energy, and changing the levels of the associated bodies of water by a few percent.

In the past what we did for energy was town-sized opencast coal mines. This isn't that. 

Plus. In any other northern European country which doesn't have over grazing, none of these hydro projects would even be visible because of the genuinely natural treeline would be way higher up the hills. 

Well, I mean.... Take the famously ugly Norway which anyone will tell you is an absolute minger because it gets all its power from hydro. What everyone says when they come back is "Wow, what an ugly country".

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

Not infinitesimal. A small but vital part of the puzzle we have to solve. If we don't solve our bits, why should anyone else?

I'd guess it's the assertion we shouldn't do this or that because chocolate box views while asserting we should do better without recognising better doesn't really exist, we need to do all of it and more and it's all compromised as hell. That's life. Do we want to try and fix it or just give up, enjoy our views and accept our kids will come to hate us with an unimaginable fury for that choice.

If your 'solution' is hair shirt ascetism and that works for you then great, genuinely, but until you can persuade several billion of your fellow beings to give up on their aspirations for a more comfortable life it is going to fall to the engineers* to start cooling down the hot mess we've made of our world.

*or the WMD

jk

Don't mention Norway, the evil international money-grubbing corporation that was mentioned earlier who want's to destroy Loch Ness is the Norweigen state hydropower company. Why it isn't a Scottish entrepreneur or the Scottish government at least keeping the profits for destroying the countryside in Scotland who knows?

Lacking skills, balls and foresight.

You could ask the same question about who is building wind turbines.

yes, we designed and produced some big 130,000 rpm flywheels for a URENCO funded research programme back in the day. carbon fibre rotor with integral rare earth magnet material. We made the AC machine and magnetic bearings. We also had to manufacture an insanely large magnetising fixture instantaneously fired by a building full of supercaps with the cables snaking around when it was fired. Those were the days. Research tailed off after a big accident at BMW

Interestingly enough I was in the workshop this afternoon when our big generator fired up and the other two went full power, we provide grid balance power and inertia as to go up to full power takes about 1 second and for a cold-start 30 seconds, guess there was a glitch somewhere in the grid. My local grid is a bit too reliant on hydro and solar, both of which need external synchronisation as in fact do our generators, we actually have an additional generator just to provide 50hZ for our system though it's never been used.

Another good read on the subject:
https://www.drax.com/power-generation/why-spin-a-turbine-without-generating...

All the above conversations convince me that just nodding through the prolific applications for pumped Hydro storage is just a bad idea . Scottish Legislation to maximise hydro  was not a bad idea but much has been overlooked in the simplicity of just encouraging that idea., - few caveats about biodiversity in place for these schemes to be assessed against.

I'm glad I signed the petition to give space for the debate and for  a more coherent and cohesive policy to emerge  that would encourage companies and investors to aim towards. 

Prolific applications, how many?

Biodiversity, Scottish over grazed uplands are famed for their biodiversity!

Keeping hydro but banning grouse shooting would do far far more for biodiversity in Scotland

https://www.google.com/search?q=loch+ness+different+hdro+schemes+map&rl...

and Weir 2

I also attended th explanatory talk by the Salmon Fisheries Board.

Placement was the issue. A preferable idea for Pumped hydro storage was a proposal {situated  towards Fort William} which  uses a more closed aquatic ecology {rather than PHS using the Loch Ness/ connected to River Ness/ sea ecology }. This more closed system used an existing dammed reservoir as the lower reservoir and a higher tarn as the upper reservoir. 

Don't know the ecology of that reservoir but much less complex.

Also mentioned was that Huge amounts of water pumped out of loch ness would lower the water  level edge of loch nessside and heat the water over time.

A petition carefully worded as this one promotes a debate in the Scottish Parliament.

Also the future of the  Storage of power seems in its infancy in terms of a properly formed and considered policy. Companies may be attracted to PHS because of its  buy cheap and sell more expensive relationship rather than what is best for us as a country re technical solutions, thus leaving a bunch of  7 -year -to -build white elephants?

While this is obviously strictly true, the question is by how much and is that a big number?

I'm not familiar with the detail of the various proposed schemes so lets use some existing examples to get a rough idea how much we might be talking about. Dinorwig stores 9GWh electrical, it's one of Europe's biggest. Let's assume 10GWh is to be stored above Loch Ness for the sake of argument and to make the results easily mentally scalable if someone can provide actual figures. There are various existing tarns between 400 and 700m above and in the vicinity of Loch Ness, if we pick a lower one to begin with we maximise the amount of water moved to store a given amount of energy for a worst case.

10GWh is 3.6e+13 Joules

e = mgh, g = 10, h = 400

m = 9e+9 Kg, or 9 million Tons

water is 1T/m3 so to store 10GWh 400m above Loch Ness you'd need to move 9 million cubic meters before losses.

Electrical-Electrical efficiency for pumped hydro is ~80% so we actually need to move 9/0.8 = 11.3M m^3 of fresh water.

Loch Ness has 56.4km^2 surface area, that's 56.4M m^2

11.3M m^3 of water spread over 56.4M m^2 is 11.3/56.4 = 0.2m or 20cm deep.

If the higher 700m tarns are assumed for the upper reservoir then that fluctuation drops to 20 * 400/700 = 11cm (per 10GWh electrical stored).

let's assume the 20% round trip losses are all thermal and into the working fluid, 2GWH/cycle. Cycle it fully, daily, that's 730GWh or 2.6e+15J.

Thermal capacity of water is 4.2J/g/degC or 4.2MJ/Ton/degree

Loch ness has 7.4km^3 volume or 7.4e9 Tons of fresh water

The thermal mass of Loch Ness as a body of water is 4.2e+6 * 7.4e+9 J/degC = 3.1e+16J/degC

Therefore, if we assume all the 20% elec-elec losses are thermal and into the working fluid, the hypothetical 10GW elec store is cycled completely once daily, that warmed water mixes with the main body and the thermal losses from loch to wider environment remain constant despite the water warming then Loch Ness warms by 0.08degC per year, which admittedly seems a lot, but those assumptions are worst case/unrealistic with the exception of the hot-cold mixing which is required as an assumption to make the maths approachable on a fag packet.

We need storage, lots of it. Pumped hydro is our best grid scale option and if the taxpayer isn't going to fund it then it has to deliver a return on investment. Storage alternatives (also needing to be economically productive or tax funded) are either vapourware or will once mature be required in addition to, not instead of pumped water. We've been doing this for a century plus at scale, it's hardly in its infancy.

jk

Just to clarify it is the Policy of how we are going to tackle Storage that is it's infancy- not refering to the technonlogy. I was keen to express the need to hammer out a policy that works and takes into account everything that needs considering. At the moment  that is not the case. There are a lot of individual  submissions in an ad hoc manner. For instance Glennearrach PHS [Loch Ness} was unaware that Statera's Loch Kemp PHS had decided that an additional weir to the river was needed, just  for their scheme! It's bitsy and needs a hiatus to sort a lot out.

Nice!

0.08oC/year is slower than climate change currently!  (I know it's additional...but for context)

No it doesn't. All that can be worked out in the inevitable and needlessly expensive years that  detail plans are being drawn up and NIMBY legal challenges rumble on. 

You saved me a calculation!

Staggering how much energy is stored in that 0.08 C temperature uplift, and how inaccessible it is.

i’m looking at the board winter sky overhead tonight and wondering how much energy I could get per square meter of roof if I could use it as the cold side of something weird and wonderful.  Nighttime emissive PV is possible I believe…. 

Replace your roof with peltier elements, rip out the loft insulation, turn the heating up and watch the cash roll in....

Yeah but all that water is being pumped up 700m so stored at roughly 7° lower and cooled down. Loch Ness is going to freeze!

Thermoelectric generator with the cold side using radiative cooling with metamaterials tuned to radiate in the atmospheric IR window right through to the infinite cold sink of outer space? Cools down your house and generates electricity at the same time?

I believe lab samples have been even made, though having it a practical roof coating is probably just sci‑fi. Even passive daytime radiative cooling paint is tricky.

The ultimate sci‑fi hypothetical metamaterial coating would combine broad frequency PV power, atmospheric window passive cooling and thermoelectric power generation all in one...

But sadly, our is not the Star Fleet timeline – more like its mirror universe one

Thats the general idea, I’d imagine with day+night panels on a thermal loop so they can be cooled by day and radiate at night, storing that thermal energy in a water tank and potentially giving domestic hot water and domestic air conditioning without needing a nasty and noisy heat exchanger + fan unit.  I’ve a half thought-out plan to do this at home using the daytime panels as night time radiators (no power generation at night mind!)

Edit: link to an article on it with quite impressive claims on power from waste heat - https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/variant-on-photovoltaic-power-could...

I quite like the idea of passive heat systems. One thought that piqued my interest is asymmetric insulation, passes heat better one way than the other. With the right surface texture you could accept radiant heat from the low winter sun but reject it in higher seasons. Or perhaps have the transfer properties seasonally (or manually) controllable somehow, heat-pipes with thermal breaks that saturated in summer but work efficiently at lower temperatures for example. Overkill for passive-ish new build where you can just position the windows to do the job but potentially useful for older stock.

Jk

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon

I was thinking more integrated solar-thermal panel than magic

Jk

Once you have good thermal diodes the possibilities are fascinating.  Bimetallic strips thermally fixed to one side of an air gap they can bridge for example.  There are other more atomic scale approaches.  Early days for them I think.

Not very thermally applicable but in the aqueous nature of the thread - water diodes are a thing - when I have some spare time I want to 3D print a desktop demonstrator with some little holes to introduce food dye in to the stream at the start - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_valve

No need for breaking thermodynamic laws, even if that could have been actually neat in a way (alas, our universe's physical laws tend to be on the boring side at times).

A solar awning works the same way as @jkarran posted, letting in low winter sun and shading from summer's high angled sunlight.

Quite possibly you could have something similar on a nano level as a coating, a metamaterial that perfectly reflects certain angles of rays, but accepts others. As in all metamaterials, the practicality in the real world (even after considering the price) might be quite limited, so a solar awning it is...

But some stuff done with metamaterials is pretty cool. Even if just biomimetic (butterflies got all the patents for nanoscale photon frequency sorting quite a long ago)...

Passive daylight radiative cooling is one of them, if it makes into a cheap and practical stage (perhaps it already did for some applications, no idea). Earth's atmosphere is basically transparent to several long IR wavelengths, so if you can manipulate your material to preferentially radiate in those, you have a near direct radiative link to the "cold sink" of the outer space, even in full sunlight.

Conduction and convection still apply here, obviously, but it could really help making homes just a bit cooler in the hot climate to come, somewhat lessening the energy needs for AC.

It's not, there are various plants using slightly different systems which have been running for 30 years in the uk. There are dozens more on other countries. 

In terms of ancient passive housing, I was really, really impressed with some of the ancient Persian home engineering when I visited Iran (my EU passport helped there then, as well as the slight general hope for a better Iran at the time (which didn't last, sadly – I wouldn't have ever thought of visiting after the 2022 or prior bloody protests, not wanting to even remotely support the regime with my visa fee after the last one).

All the windcatcher towers, qanats and their evaporative coolers et al were pretty impressive, especially for a couple of millennia‑old tech...

Obviously, quite a few of those passive solutions rely on an arid climate and such, but even modern passive housing can still use (and actually does, I think) some of them.

Nessie hunts on skates, anyone? A local economy miracle!

Your calculations are additionally complicated by the fact that water flows into Loch Ness but outflow is controlled to maintain a minimum depth downstream, the water level in the Loch is maintained by a weir and river flow by a sluice. The mnimum outflow is 22m³/s and is usually much greater. There is a hydrological study which suggests the average water level in the loch would vary 4cm with the three systems operating (the existing plant is already required to stop pumping at a minimum level).

Yep, some assumptions and gross oversimplifications in there, I just wanted to get a feeling for how alarmist the objections might be. Either way, unmitigated climate change will be worse and much of what we fetishise and fight to preserve in our countryside is already heavily degraded industrial wasteland, just one we've grown familiar with and fond of.

The scale of the losses surprised me if you work the store hard. Being able, through losses to appreciably shift the temperature of something the scale of Loch Ness is arresting, even if in reality the heating rate will for a variety of reasons likely be an order of magnitude or more out from my crude guesstimate.

Jk

There's a kW/m2* of sun hitting it in the day. There's no way you'd measure the change you're taking about. 

* Adjust for Scotland, so maybe a fraction of that, but that order.

As regards  the proposed Weir 2 [ The River Ness  is connected to Loch Ness} which aims to artificially raise the level of Loch Ness by adding a 1 metre high extension on top of the Douchfour Weir at the head of the river ness:

Below I Quote from an article in the Inverness courier . The article quotes Brian Shaw, Director of Ness District Salmon Fishery Board:

"This (Weir 2) confirms our own conclusions that there is simply not enough available water in Loch Ness to make any further pump storage schemes viable without major modifications like this"

and he maintained raising level of Loch Ness {to compensate for this}  by one metre would have 

"devastating and irreversible ecological consequences" and"the proposed weir will facilitate control over the level of Loch Ness and flows in the River Ness, to the detriment of both"'

and Brian Shaw also said in this newspaper article that he believed PHS schemes" should be located where the environmental and societal risks were lower" [quote from the Inverness Courier article}

Generally when you read any numbers in a newspaper it’s worth assuming they’re made up and double checking them, as has been done on this thread - showing a considerable difference…

Given the flow rate signal you could look for a phase shifted, correlated signal in dT/dt over a year or more of data.  A completely pointless measurement task I’d quite like to undertake, ideally at different distances from the outlet.  

‘Course it’ll be a larger signal in the upper reserve.

Yes and given its currently steady state (climate change aside), there are matching losses. Just because a big system has big background inputs and outputs doesn't mean an additional smaller one can't shift its equilibrium.

FWIW I don't think it will have much impact for a variety of reasons but the electrical-electrical conversion losses of a big power plant worked very hard aren't completely trivial compared to the Loch's ability to simply absorb them unperturbed despite its vast size. Which is surprising to me.

jk

Also they rarely put them in context (nor does Margie). The usual range of  levels in Loch Ness is obviously dependent on the rainfall and varies around 1m but the difference between the highest and lowest recorded values is 2.27m. The current trend is to lower levels which is causing concern to the shipping companies regarding the future of tourist shipping as the weir was originally constructed to maintain sufficient draught throughout the loch and canal system. The proposal to raise the weir is in order to maintain the loch level and ensure navigation which indirectly impacts the pumped storage schemes as maintaining flow into the river Ness takes priority over both the canal depth and pumped storage.

However! Claiming that doing this will cause irreversible environmental damage is perhaps on dodgy ground, it would in reality mean a change in an already artificial condition since the loch and rivers environment was clearly different prior to the canal and weir construction. Surely we should be removing the weir altogether, letting Loch Ness lower the 1.2m to it's original level. After all the canal was built for the military and now is only for the benefit of tourist and the river only controlled for the benefit of the rich who enjoy torturing fish (Mr Shaws group).

Re-naturise the lot!

So the SSSI [ special site of scientific interest} at Loch Ness side {the River Farigaig  and its juncture with Loch Ness and its lovely riparian areas - which I also believe could be designated a Temperate Rainforest remnant on account of flora and fauna in it's very particular climactic conditions} will suffer another partial drowning because of a raising of  Loch Ness water levels.

I live above this SSSI and discuss some of the attributes that I discover with nature.scot -who I believe need to study it further.

There is also the "Affric Highland Project" that encompasses Loch Ness itself and aims at rewilding a huge area.

This isn't flooding a desert, or draining a swamp. It's changing the level by less than nature does.

The species that reside by the lake shore will rapidly colonise the land a couple of metres further up the hillside. They'll still be found by the lake shore. The species that live in the water will get a couple more metres to live in. They'll still live in the water. The species that live in the margins and shallows will very quickly relocate a by couple of metres. 

If any species is going to be put at risk by this, it sure as shit won't survive inaction on climate change.

To add, - As regards the Affric Highlands Rewilding Project which includes Loch Ness within its boundaries, I can see common ground with the preservation of wild salmon, so I find the petition relevant.

All you'd need is a way to filter for solar illumination and air temperatures...... In Scotland...... Which......er..... Might find yourself taking data for quite a while to get what you want.

You've given me an idea for a great interview question though. 

Edit: ooh, and relative humidity too, actually. That could have a pretty profound effect on the surface temperature. And winds. 

Get the calculator back out jk....

Lock ins can get orders of magnitude below the noise floor; this is repetitive but not cyclical, but given the clear reference signal you could get it’s still possible.  The questions is not “can it be done” but “how many downwards release cycles are needed to do it”.  It’ll be in to the hundreds - minimum - given the scale, but I expect many releases events are faster than the weather factors…  
 

And also to add,

wild salmon are temperature affected and there is a body of water so to speak within the water of Loch ness of critical  temperature to the wild salmon [ paraphrase from the lecture I attended} . This apparently is at risk of temperature change from the massive  movement  of water if all the PHS currently submitted were to go ahead.

I signed the petition because it would give an opportunity to set  considered parameters , {that are not yet in place, } as to where PHS could be more appropriately built in relationship to  our rivers and wider aquatic ecology.

Investors in PHS could direct their efforts in a better way.

Currently an investor can approach any estate, do all the planning applications and only then purchase that land from the estate if those plans succeed { Statera Energy's approach to Loch Kemp estate}. It seems Glenearrach Energy  on Balmacaan estate are already the investors who own the estate anyway. 

But investors could choose their locations less environmentally impactful if the government chose to add in parameters. 

A petition can trigger such a debate and set better parameters within the Scottish Parliament.

I believe this is what the petition is trying to do for Scottish rivers. Petitions need numbers to achieve that debate.

This is just scaremongering.

During periods of high pressure with sunny days and frosty nights a shallow river will fluctuate by up to 10C, this will never happen in a huge loch.

(I worked with salmon for over 30 years.)

The petition:

https://www.parliament.scot/get-involved/petitions/view-petitions/pe2109-ha...

is careful to ask for a

"moratorium on any further development of pump storage hydro operations on Scottish lochs holding wild Atlantic salmon until the impact of such developments on wild Atlantic salmon migrations is understood."

So even if that talk I attended was inaccurate or maybe you are inaccurate, a chance to properly explore this issue is catered for in the petition.

I posted facts.