• Advertise
  • About us
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Contact us
Saturday, May 17, 2025
Australian Times News
  • News
    • Weather
    • Sport
    • Technology
    • Business & Finance
      • Currency Zone
    • Lotto Results
      • The Lott
  • Lifestyle
    • Entertainment
    • Horoscopes
    • Health & Wellness
    • Recipes
  • Travel
  • Expat Life
  • Move to Australia
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Weather
    • Sport
    • Technology
    • Business & Finance
      • Currency Zone
    • Lotto Results
      • The Lott
  • Lifestyle
    • Entertainment
    • Horoscopes
    • Health & Wellness
    • Recipes
  • Travel
  • Expat Life
  • Move to Australia
No Result
View All Result
Australian Times News
No Result
View All Result
Home Technology

The UK plans to build huge batteries to store renewable energy – but there’s a much cheaper solution

The UK government recently announced the removal of planning barriers to building energy storage projects over 50MW in England and 350MW in Wales.

The Conversation by The Conversation
28-07-2020 01:51
in Technology
The UK plans to build huge batteries to store renewable energy

The UK plans to build huge batteries to store renewable energy Photo by Jan Kaluza on Unsplash

Andrew Cruden, University of Southampton

The UK electricity system is undergoing significant and rapid change. It has the world’s largest installed capacity of offshore wind, has effectively stopped generating electricity from coal, and has recorded a 20% drop in demand since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Petrmalink/Shutterstock

However, this transition from traditional, reliable coal to weather-dependent wind and solar generation brings with it increasing challenges to match electrical supply and demand at every instant. This is where large grid-scale energy storage systems could help regulate and buffer supply and demand, and improve grid control.

The UK government recently announced the removal of planning barriers to building energy storage projects over 50MW in England and 350MW in Wales. This, the government feels, will enable the creation of significant new energy storage capacity. The UK currently has 1GW of operational battery storage units and an additional 13.5GW of battery projects under development at the planning stage.

This intervention by the government creates a planning environment that could enable the UK to reach its target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. This could happen with either a high proportion of large-scale, centralised renewable generation, or with more of a priority on smaller community schemes such as locally owned wind turbines and solar panels. Batteries will, in particular, contribute significantly to the grid regulation of a further 30GW of offshore wind by 2030 (to achieve the UK target of 40GW of offshore wind by that year).

But pursuing ever larger, stationary battery systems may not be the optimal solution for the UK to have a renewable energy future. Instead, the answer could lie in the country’s garages and car parks.

As the UK has moved from fossil fuel to renewable energy electricity generation, CO₂ emissions from the energy supply sector have fallen from over 40% of the UK total in 1990 to 25% in 2019. This means the transport sector is now the largest emitter, producing a third of all UK CO₂ emissions.

AlsoRead...

Biela.dev is quietly becoming the Infrastructure Layer for the Next Internet

Biela.dev is quietly becoming the Infrastructure Layer for the Next Internet

15 May 2025
The Predictive Infrastructure: How BOF’s Neuro Finance System Reengineers Market Forecasting

The Predictive Infrastructure: How BOF’s Neuro Finance System Reengineers Market Forecasting

5 May 2025

This has led to a growing focus on the introduction of plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles. As just one in ten cars sold in the UK fall into the these categories, there is still some way to go to reducing the impact of petrol and diesel vehicles. Significantly more infrastructure is needed to support them, and their growing popularity increases the amount of electricity that the grid needs to provide, one-third of which is still produced from natural gas.

Smiling man plugs in electric car.
Electric vehicles could be used to store excess energy. Dmytro Zinkevych/Shutterstock

However, electric vehicles could also help with making electricity production greener. When an electric vehicle is plugged in for re-charging, it is effectively enabling the electricity grid to access its battery. When you have many vehicles all plugged in at once, they create a very large aggregated battery store. This is a concept known as vehicle-to-grid (V2G), and could create a much larger and cheaper alternative energy store than stationary large battery systems.

There are 38.2m licensed vehicles in the UK, including some 31.5m cars. If these were all battery electric vehicles (each storing an average of 50kWh of energy and connected via a 7kW charger), this could create a nationwide distributed mega battery with a capacity of 220.5GW. This would be over 15 times the size of the currently planned large battery storage.

Cheaper option

The costs of this aggregated battery would also be much easier to bear as individual vehicle owners would purchase the cars and batteries, instead of government and private investors having to spend millions on big projects. The cost of electric vehicle batteries has fallen some 87% over the last ten years to an average of US$156/kWh (£123/kWh), and is on a trajectory to reach around US$100/kWh by 2023.

Large grid-scale stationary battery system costs are at least double this amount. This is because civil engineering works, cabling, enclosures, power electronics and even air conditioning systems for regulating battery temperature are all required for large stationary battery systems.

Vehicle-to-grid storage is still a nascent concept. It requires dedicated two-way charging equipment that can also communicate with the vehicles, as well high-level aggregator control systems. However all of this technology exists.

Indeed there are a range of V2G demonstrator projects within the UK. Nissan, in particular, has embraced this technology and already offers a more limited_ vehicle-to-home (V2H) system that lets people use their cars to store energy from rooftop solar panels until it is needed in the home at night.

So while the UK government is correct that the national grid needs more energy storage to support the shift to further renewable energy generation, a focus on building large, expensive batteries isn’t necessarily the answer. Instead, electric vehicles could enable the British public to conveniently share their cars to help create a cleaner, more altruistic post-COVID world.

Andrew Cruden, Professor of Energy Technology, University of Southampton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Tags: SB001
DMCA.com Protection Status

SUBSCRIBE to our NEWSLETTER

[mc4wp_form id=”2384248″]

Don't Miss

Biela.dev is quietly becoming the Infrastructure Layer for the Next Internet

by Pauline Torongo
15 May 2025
Biela.dev is quietly becoming the Infrastructure Layer for the Next Internet
Technology

Biela.dev is not merely a consumer app; it is infrastructure. It could be a layer that powers the next generation...

Read more

The Battle for the Premier League’s Fifth Champions League Spot: Who Will Prevail?

by Fazila Olla-Logday
8 May 2025
Premier-Leagues-Fifth-Champions-League-Janosch-Diggelmann-Unsplash
at

As the Premier League season nears its climax, the race for the coveted Champions League places is tighter and more...

Read more

The Predictive Infrastructure: How BOF’s Neuro Finance System Reengineers Market Forecasting

by Pauline Torongo
5 May 2025
The Predictive Infrastructure: How BOF’s Neuro Finance System Reengineers Market Forecasting
Business & Finance

As global markets become more complex and volatile, BOF Investments has developed Neuro Finance, a predictive system that combines machine...

Read more

UK Grocery delivery platform McGrocer expands services to Australian Market

by Pauline Torongo
2 May 2025
McGrocer opens direct access to British household brands for shoppers across Australia.
Business & Finance

McGrocer, a British online grocery platform, has expanded its international reach by offering direct delivery of UK-sourced goods to Australian...

Read more

Business Gas: 3 Easy Ways to Keep Costs Down

by Fazila Olla-Logday
23 April 2025
Image Source: Unsplash
at

For many businesses, gas is one of those overheads that rarely gets much attention—until the bills start creeping up.

Read more

Top-Rated Compensation Lawyers in Brisbane: Expert Legal Help for Your Claim

by Fazila Olla-Logday
23 April 2025
Business & Finance

"🏅 Explore top-rated compensation lawyers in Brisbane! Offering expert legal help for your claim. Your victory is our priority! ⚖️💼👨‍⚖️"

Read more

The Q: Exciting New Venue will be Transformational for Queensland

by Pauline Torongo
22 April 2025
The Q: Exciting New Venue will be Transformational for Queensland
Sport

Queensland greyhound racing will embark on a new era this month when the first meeting is staged at an exciting...

Read more
Load More

Copyright © Blue Sky Publications Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
australiantimes.co.uk is a division of Blue Sky Publications Ltd. Reproduction without permission prohibited. DMCA.com Protection Status

  • About us
  • Write for Us
  • Advertise
  • Contact us
  • T&Cs, Privacy and GDPR
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Weather
    • Sport
    • Technology
    • Business & Finance
      • Currency Zone
    • Lotto Results
      • The Lott
  • Lifestyle
    • Entertainment
    • Horoscopes
    • Health & Wellness
    • Recipes
  • Travel
  • Expat Life
  • Move to Australia

Copyright © Blue Sky Publications Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
australiantimes.co.uk is a division of Blue Sky Publications Ltd. Reproduction without permission prohibited. DMCA.com Protection Status