N.B. pumped storage or other hydro is difficult in the UK; a 2000ft peak is officially a mountain, and there aren't many of those.
Pumped hydro can be effective and profitable with just 50-100m (a few hundred feet) of head, or use pumped tidal pools in estuaries or other low depth areas.
Storage in estuaries is a disreputable claim. Such "batteries" will naturally be replenished when the tide next comes in, so if you want to count them as useful storage of excess wind power, it has to be with two significant conditions:
- it has to be the right time of day to store and use the energy; at other times it is impossible
- any such stored energy has to be used within a couple of hours, before the tide comes in; not much use for wind power outages lasting days due to a blocking high pressure zone
This old chestnut, you can store and dispatch energy from tidal
storage at any planned time. There are no times when it is impossible to produce energy to schedule. Yes it will
produce less energy if you demand more storage from the system, and/or reduce the storage capacity if you want it at a specific time, but these are the balances and tradeoffs that also exist to a lesser extent in conventional land based pumped hydro. For tidal systems the energy can be stored either as an empty or full reservoir for moving water to or from on demand, its the scheduling that makes it work as storage rather than a simple generator.
Most people recognise that Australia != UK.
Which is why I carefully described both and didn't make any blanket statements.
You evidently haven't read/understood "Without Hot Air". The second page of chapter 1 contains this important point describing a primary motivation for MacKay writing the book in the first place
Other than conversing with the Author and contributing to the work, I have also read it. It presents with great technical detail and accuracy technologies and limitations that could provide energy for the UK, you can see all sorts of possible ways froward from its examples. Finding storage to back a 100% renewable electricity grid for the UK is plausible, and profitable, it may not be cheaper for the consumer or more profitable for the operators than the nuclear or gas plants but of the 5 technically feasible energy plans for the UK presented in the book 1 was 100% renewable. There is much detail in the book on the current state of the UKs energy storage infrastructure, and what opportunities are available hence why I referred to it on that specific point.
Fossil fuels are naturally pricing themselves out of the market because of fuel costs, competing demand for the fuel resource just as there is competing demand for the land space needed for mines, renewable energy, farming, etc.
That's precisely the kind of accountancy jiggery-pokery that I'm talking about.
Thats the realities of a market economy, if you want more reliable power you can pay for it, such contracts already exist and are available to the public.
Are you saying that jiggery-pokery is the reality of a market economy? If not, then what are you trying to say?
If the generating plant and capacity is not available, then I can't get electricity no matter how much I might be prepared to pay for it. Don't forget the "<5% excess capacity" and "notices of insufficiency".
Never underestimate the shortsightedness, self interest, and general ineptitude of politicians - particularly when they don't want to hear reality.
When has the UK grid gone completely dark? Thats the event when zero electricity is available at any cost, if you're willing to pay for it either though supply contracts or local storage you can have all the reliability you want. But if you want to stick with lowest cost options, they are less reliable and subject to rolling blackouts to shed power when demand exceeds supply. Why are residences put into blackout? Because they are the lowest cost on the supplier to curtail, contracts plain and simple.
The existing pumped hydro in Australia and the UK uses only a small portion of the available dams, and on those dams only a small portion of the available volume.
Australia maybe, but that certainly isn't the case in the UK.
Energy storage in the UK totals 33GWh from your reference, Dinorwig alone has approximately 10.4GWh of that (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_projects, other references make it 9-10GW) yet its not cycled to that depth routinely (ever?) and the working capacity is around half the theoretical capacity and even that isn't cycled daily. Water is retained in the system for drought relief, flood control, and other water management reasons as discussed above there are competing demands on water in dams beyond electricity storage. The Ffestiniog plant similarly uses less than the full storage capacity available to it.
The British Hydropower Association sees at least a doubling in capacity from already identified resources:
http://www.british-hydro.org/hydro_in_the_ukGIS studies can find enormous potential for hydro,
be it pumped:
https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/sites/jrcsh/files/jrc_20130503_assessment_european_phs_potential.pdfor otherwise:
http://www.british-hydro.org/UK%20Hydro%20Resource/England%20and%20Wales%20Resource%20Study%20Oct%202010.pdf