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From: john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: energy in UK
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2025 07:36:11 -0700
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On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:39:57 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

>On 16/04/2025 00:17, john larkin wrote:
>> On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:04:37 +0100, Martin Brown
>> <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
>> 
>>> UK national infrastructure has been privatised and robbed blind by
>>> vulture capitalists since the 1980's. It isn't just electricity that is
>>> problematic London's water supply was in dire danger of going bust too.
>>>
>>> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66051555
>>>
>>> It is ultimately all about very clever financial engineering to load the
>>> balance sheet with debt and pay handsome dividends to foreign owners.
>>>
>>> Penny wise and pound foolish for the the UK.
>> 
>> There will never be enough batteries to power even a tiny country like
>> the UK,  to keep people alive through a few weeks of cold, dark, still
>> weather.
>
>I'm inclined to agree. But provided that you use nuclear power 
>generation for the base load you only need about 60GWhr of battery 
>storage to time shift night time electricity to cover the daytime.

Why build insanely expensive and dangerous battery farms so you can
run the nukes at 200% capacity half the time and 0% the rest?

We're lucky to have a good deal of hydro and lots of natural gas, both
easily tunable to varying loads. Power is very reliable here.

>
>UK BESS operators should be limited to having a substation capable of 
>recharging their storage capacity at the C/8 rate so that they can 
>recharge during the slack hours (2200-1800) in winter and then resupply 
>at peak times (0900-2100) major evening peak is 1800-2100. In summer it 
>is much less of a problem - the system really creaks in winter.

Fine, let someone do that without subsidies. 

>
>They like to charge at C/2 to exploit the pricing algorithm glitches and 
>isn't all that good for the batteries.
>
>It would take an impossibly large battery storage capacity to handle a 
>long becalmed event in mid winter. The numbers that NESO bandy around 
>for UK net zero by 2030/50 (delete as appropriate) are pure fantasy.

Socialist and communist governments substitute politicians for
engineers.



>
>Our grid system will fail soon but I live in the northern region that 
>will still have power (and mains water) when it all goes to pot. NESO's 
>long term decadal master plan is for two or more very long DC cables in 
>the North Sea for the Russians to sabotage as and when they like.
>
>https://www.neso.energy/document/315516/download
>
>Page 7 (and elsewhere) - warning it is very long and tedious stuff.
>Volume and pretty pictures makes up for useful technical content.
>
>> People can keep warm by snuggling around burning lithium batteries.
>
>The big snag with Lithium batteries is their nasty tendency to catch 
>fire spectacularly. A guy at nearby Newcastle University is an expert on 
>such incidents - there isn't any good way to put such fires out either.
>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jby0uyL78YU
>
>Skip to 12 minutes in for the juicy bits
>(starts with a chemistry lesson)

Cool. Not literally.

>
>I'm fighting a plan to build the world's largest BESS on my doorstep.
>It would be hard to find a worse spot to put one. We are sat on the 
>choke point where the 400kV lines are routinely overloaded in winter.

We had a pretty big lithium battery fire here recently.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/01/23/moss-landing-lithium-battery-plant-fire-vistra/77912642007/

nice video:  

https://apnews.com/article/battery-storage-plant-fire-california-moss-landing-7c561fed096f410ddecfb04722a8b1f8


Google auto-complete is great. All you have to type is  

lithium b

to see the fires.