|2023-04-11T10:15:35-04:00April 4th, 2023|Comments Off on Bill Ponton’s “Reality Check” On UK Wind Power: The Issue of Energy Storage
Bill Ponton’s new Report, “The Cost of Increasing Wind Power: A Reality Check,” contains a short but pithy section addressing the question of energy storage. Here’s the question to be addressed: If after the first round of overbuilding, adding new wind generation resources adds little useful energy and most of the added generation ends up getting “curtailed,” then why not just add some batteries or other energy storage to the system? Wind energy advocates suggest that some form of batteries can store the excess electricity production until it is needed, and everything will then just balance out in perfect equilibrium.
Is there any problem here? Ponton does the simple calculations with his UK 2022 spreadsheet to derive how much storage in GWh will be needed, and what its functional characteristics must be. His results are very similar to the results of comparable exercises previously undertaken by Roger Andrews for California and Germany, and Ken Gregory for the U.S.
The main problem identified by Ponton is the same one previously identified by Andrews and Gregory. Before you even get to the very high cost of storing electricity, there is another huge hurdle, which is that the availability of wind to generate electricity varies with a seasonal pattern. Therefore, to match electricity supplied to electricity demanded, the storage balance must be built up over about a six month period to an enormous level, and then discharged over the following six month period.
Ponton considers the case of a tripling of UK wind generation rated capacity, from the current 28 GW to 84 GW. Average usage is about 35 GW, and peak usage is about 45 GW; so the 84 GW of rated wind capacity provides plenty of spare electricity to charge the batteries when the wind is blowing at full strength, or even close to that.
Ponton next assumes purchase of 12,000 GWh of battery storage capacity. With that in place, here is his chart of additions and withdrawals from storage based on the UK 2022 data: