From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

While I was googling the Spanish blackouts, I came across this little story:

The creation of a battery energy storage system to help prevent blackouts similar to the one suffered in Spain recently has been given the go-ahead by Solihull planners.

Applicant Conrad Energy (Developments) II Limited submitted the plan to develop land at Burton Green Farm, near Solihull, last September.

The systems – to store electricity to be used during fluctuations or in the event of a blackout – was earmarked for agricultural fields surrounded by mature field boundaries and woodland.

“With new renewables coming online it is essential we have the storage in order to have energy available when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining ,” he said.

“We have seen that recent example in Spain (in April) where they had an over reliance on solar which caused a meltdown of their system.”

Full story here.

The idea that this tiny 100 MW storage plant would have avoided Spain’s blackouts is absurd. For a start, batteries cannot supply system inertia. Once the blackouts took hold, no amount of battery storage would have made any difference at all.

Furthermore Burton Green will be of no use at all when the wind stops blowing for two weeks.

This attempt to build an industrial scale storage site in the countryside is just a money grabbing attempt to play the system – whether buying power when it is cheap and selling when it is high or just getting paid millions in subsidies for grid balancing.