Back up costs | Claverton Group

Are large thermal stores and Combined Heat and Power District Heating (CHP) with District Heating (DH) pipes to deliver heat to buildings is more likely to be a better solution to de carbonising the building heating sector than relying on large-scale electricity storage of renewable or nuclear electricity (the “all electric solution”) delivered to buildings via cable?

One of the most intractable energy problems in Europe is how to deal with the heating load of buildings, (11 EJ/y), which is the largest user of primary energy and is presently met largely with gas. This heat load will not go away due to the expense of insulating the legacy buildings beyond quite modest […]

Effect of brutal cutoff of wind capacity – Spanish Wind ramping, intermittency back up

http://www.carboncommentary.com/2009/11/15/853 Spain’s variable wind and stable electricity networks Sunday 15 November 2009 in uncategorized by Chris Goodall One of the frequent criticisms of wind energy is that national distribution systems (‘the grid’) cannot cope with large number of turbines because of the variability and unpredictability of their output. Grids need to match supply and demand […]

Why was Dinorwig built? Load following, standby, fast reserve, pumped storage?

Roger, My own analysis has also shown that there is insufficient value in the difference between peak and off peak electricity prices to make energy storage economic. However, this may not be the only revenue stream for an energy storage system. Mechanisms that may provide greater return are as you say, within islanded communities (where […]

UK Energy bills set to rise £ 3 / year to pay for £2bn investment in distribution / trasnmission

4th Oct 2010 – BBC web site Energy bills set to rise to pay for £32bn investment The rise in renewable energy such as windfarms mean a radical rewiring of the National Grid is needed Gas and electricity bills will both have to rise by £3 a year, as £32bn is needed to improve the […]