The world’s first two gigawatt network of grid-scale batteries and rapid electric vehicle charging points is to be built across the UK.
Pivot Power has unveiled plans for a £1.6bn programme to build the infrastructure needed to support the mass adoption of electric vehicles.
The battery network will also help the National Grid to manage supply and demand, particularly with the greater use of intermittent renewable energy and mass charging of electric cars.
The company, which has secured funding from UK investment manager Downing LLP, is planning to develop 45 sites across the country, with the first likely to begin operating at a location near Southampton in 2019, according to chief technical officer Michael Clark.
A further nine sites are due to begin operating within the next 18 months, he said. “Then the ambition is that over a five-year period, we’ll have all 45 sites up and running.”
Pivot Power will install 50MWh batteries at electricity sub-stations, which will be connected directly to the extra-high-voltage transmission system. This will allow the network access to far greater capacity than would be possible if it were linked to the lower voltage regional distribution system, said Clark.
“It means that we can operate at a scale that we couldn’t dream about if we were going in at the 11,000 volt network on the distribution side,” he said. “It also means that we can avoid some of the costs that we would have to occur if we were a lot further down the distribution system.”
The battery network will be capable of storing enough electricity to supply 235,000 homes for a day, and releasing or absorbing two thirds of the power of the planned Hinkley C nuclear power plant.
The vehicle charging stations will be able to support up to 100 rapid 150kW chargers. Once available in the UK, they will also be able to support rapid 350kW chargers.
Each charging station will have a 20MW power connection, enough to supply a town of 10,000 homes.
Combining batteries with electric vehicle charging will maximise the value from each grid connection, while gaining economies of scale from such a large network should drive down building and operating costs, the company said.
While battery development is proceeding fantastically rapidly and the need for storage of power is massive, batteries place is probably limited to the kWh range of storage. We need GWh storage at a sensible price.
The fire risk associated with rapid charging batteries has now been recognised in the USA, where limitations are being imposed on battery installation in domestic areas due to a number of serious fires that are difficult to extinguish.
In my opinion a LV local DC networking approach to power to / from solar cells and to / from cars would be beneficial: much modern domestic equipment is now DC and numerous transformers are needed.
“50MW batteries” doesn’t mean anything.
Battery energy is measured in MWatt hours.
Are they 50MWatt hours, 50 MWatt minutes or 50 MWatt seconds?
National Grid’s view:
“Do you have an idea of the optimum duration of a battery?”
“Our initial analysis indicated that a battery with a 45 minute duration (minimum operational state of charge to maximum operational state of charge) based on current frequency data and possibly one that minimizes or at least meets the 95% availability. However, this is currently under review, and we will be giving more guidance on the minimum duration required shortly. The maximum duration that we would value from an EFR service is 30 minutes, any ability of the assets to deliver energy beyond this timeframe has no additional value to NGET, however it is up to Applicants to size the
energy capacity of their assets (where necessary)”
https://www.nationalgrid.com/sites/default/files/documents/Enhanced%20Frequency%20Response%20FAQs%20v5.0_.pdf
I think the world will rue the day that we started to become reliant on batteries – horrible, poisonous short-lived and unsustainable things made of rare resources that they are. Banks of simple (high mass/radius of gyration but comparatively low RPM) flywheels could be used in the same way for hundreds of years without any loss of storage capacity or performance.
“Pivot Power will install 50MW batteries at electricity sub-stations”
Don’t you mean 50MWh, (energy capacity)?
page 10 :
https://www.nationalgrid.com/sites/default/files/documents/Enhanced%20Frequency%20Response%20FAQs%20v5.0_.pdf
Wow 45 sites, that’s going to help a lot – not! There needs to thousands more, far more than there are petrol stations already. Not to forget the battery recycling centres, and resupply at short notice.
E.ON’s Blackburn Meadows 10MW battery cost £3.89m; it stores 5MW-h (fully charged – discharged in 1/2 hour)
Enhanced Frequency Response payments are £7 to £12 per MW/h (yes I do mean megawatts per hour) please will someone explain the business model to me
Sources:
https://becomekinetic.worldsecuresystems.com/img/E.ON_Bianco.pdf
https://www.bestmag.co.uk/content/battery-energy-storage-projects-smash-uk-efr-record
http://everoze.com/what-7mwhr-for-efr-storage-explain/
50 MW (yes I do mean megawatts not megawatt-hours) is the limit for EFR payments at a single site and National Grid suggests 30 – 45 minutes storage capacity is adequate all is explained here:
https://www.nationalgrid.com/sites/default/files/documents/Enhanced%20Frequency%20Response%20FAQs%20v5.0_.pdf
We already have a massive store of solar energy spread across the planet. It is called natural gas. We already have the technology developed and refined over the past 100 + years to use this solar energy called Internal combustion engines. We already have hundreds of millions of vehicles across the globe able to use the available clean technology efficiently and cheaply without compromising our grid energy supply systems.
Can someone explain why we need to have these very expensive batteries, that keep being offered up, as a future motive technology option.
Call me a bit of a sceptic but 45 charging points seems a bit underwhelming no matter what voltage feeds into them.
I still think solar storage laid down millions of years ago is our best option for affordable motive power, i.e. natural gas.
Or how about oil or coal?
I believe that the absolute maximum of the energy created and passing from ‘our’ sun actually falling upon us (and having done so for the 4.7 billion years it and later ‘we’ have been here) is 1/2,000,000,000 (one two billionth) of that generated . Can we take any steps to change that number ? Seems to me that such would make all our lives so much easier. Of course, like most Engineers we are simple technicians? Not educated at all? So how can we possibly make any contribution to the future strategic thinking necessary to preserve our ‘race’. Perhaps that name itself is an issue? why must it be a race, with all the implications. What about human state!
You seem to be suggesting thay we create a Dyson sphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere – well beyond even hypothetical technology.