Legislation Introduced: Storage Subject to Local Planning
BEIS ministers have introduced secondary legislation allows, for England at least (Scottish and Welsh rules differ), all storage except Pumped Hydro will be subject to local planning regulations: currently it’s subject to the national NSIP process which is much longer and more arduous. This is because of the increasing realisation that multi-hour and multi-day storage is required on the grid “in order to introduce more wind and solar”.
This is just one (but an important one) of many changes required to level the playing field between storage, generation and interconnectors. It significantly reduces capital costs and lead times on new plants.
European Project of Common Interest
Storelectric’ CARES project (40+500MW Green CAES ™plants in Cheshire) has been accredited as a European Project of Common Interest in the 4th PCI List. This provides eligibility for large EU grants under the Connecting Europe Facility scheme, as well as accelerated permitting and other assistance.
Brexit leaves the benefits of this uncertain. We may opt to remain within ENTSO-E (European National Transmission System Operators – Electricity) whose membership includes 6 non-EU countries. We may also opt to subscribe to the funding opportunities: many non-EU countries do too. But we may not.
We have applied for first-stage funding for the 40MW plant. We are hopeful but do not rely on getting it, and our track record of winning public funding is zero: the economics of all our plants are worked out without public funding, which is a commercial bonus. However such a grant could be critical in unblocking the financing of the plants, which has proved so hard to find over the last 6 years.
Lockdown analysis updated again
Mark has further analysed National Grid’s figures and forecasts for stability services costs and you can see the article here – concluding that year-round costs will exceed £1bn p.a. by 2030 – and that’s without considering imbalance costs, trading price volatility, curtailment and other balancing and ancillary services, all of which are increasing fast and continually.
MIT Study on Storage
Massechussetts Institute of Technology undertook a study on battery storage. They concluded that at current capital costs for a 4-hour system, there is economic use for storage up to 4% of demand, quadrupling as capital costs of storage drop towards $150/kWh. There is no statement as to whether this includes grid connection and property/ancillary capital costs. Our capital cost (all-inclusive) for the fifth-off is already $140/kWh for a 5-hour Green CAES ™ plant and less for CCGT CAES; longer-duration plants are cheaper per kWh. And while batteries (including their inverters etc.) have a 6-8 year life, the life of ours is 40-50 years.
Mailing List
As stated in our last update, Storelectric will be refining our mailing list in order to control costs by continuing to send them out only to those who are interested. We will continue to mail anyone who clicks on any link in any email, and remove those who don’t. If you’re removed but still wish to receive the emails, you can easily re-sign here. If you wish to remain on the list, you may be interested in one of the articles above, or one of our past articles.
Thought Leadership Blog
Vehicle to Grid and Shared Mobility
Vehicle to Grid (V2G) and Shared Mobility are two of the big buzz-phrases rolled out in the transportation sector, as magical solutions to energy storage needs of the grid (V2G) and to all the woes of transport-related climate change. They have both advantages and disadvantages which need to be considered in planning and policy making.