When was the last time a new dam and hydro electric power plant was built in your country?

Either all of the favourable geography has already been dammed, or good luck getting environmental approval.

Page 7 of https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-09/LDES%20... lists the technology types of the project applications. The majority are Li-Ion BESS, but there are also other battery chemistries and Liquid/Compress Air Storage

1. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/press-release/super-battery-project...

Government picking winners?

When did that ever work out well?

The floor is a minimum revenue guarantee, to protect investors at times when the wholesale price is low and the cap is a maximum revenue limit to protect consumers when the wholesasle price is high.

It seems like these limits haven't been set yet, so I don't know what the potential impacts on energy prices will be.

True, but then for the UK solar power isn't the right thing for winter, hence why we need a massive mix of other stuff.

Also we have the advantage that france isn't that far away.

In the UK battery is about grid stabilisation, as in making sure that it hums at 50hz rather than 49.

> the focus of energy storage has shifted from frequency services to energy arbitrage. Due to market saturation, the share of frequency services in the revenue stack has significantly declined, from 80% in 2022 to just 20% in 2024. Looking ahead to 2030, we expect energy arbitrage to dominate the revenue stack, with most revenue coming from participation in the balancing mechanism.

As more renewables come on stream and the grid gets more complex, batteries are going to plug holes.

Energy Arbitrage is usually a good thing, so long as its regulated to for the customer, not the battery people. the point is that battery capacity is being deployed to even out the 5-9pm peak, which means that we are much much less dependent on gas turbine generators (which means less price pressure linked to LNG prices, if you're not into the co2 aspect)

No it doesn’t.

The arbitration is only possible because the battery storage providers can ever so slightly undercut the gas peakers.

The price pressure is still linked to the LNG price.

I think you underestimate the cost of running a grid battery, you need to be able to undercut significantly to make profit.

Its not like you can practically keep the battery at 98% for 7 days waiting for the right time to discharge, its not that simple.

The aim is to make as much money, but the markets you can join are regulated (in the UK)

You can be a grid stabilisation service (paid to be at % percent battery and turn on/off in milliseconds to keep the frequency from going too high or low)

You can be intra day, or day ahead. but you're not likley to be dayahead because you're rated at x Mw for n hours. The stuff that I know about in iberia is ~100-300Mw for 3 hours. Again spain is a special case because the market is peer to peer through PPA.

I digress.

The point is sure last year there wasn't really enough battery to affect peak price(in the UK), but now there is 19 gwhr. assuming its all rated for 3 hours, that around 18 % of total generating capacity for 5-8pm.

Now as there is a mix of cfd and other financial things that actually affect price, it doesn't quite work like that in the UK.

Good, we agree the solution is: Nuclear!.

Everyone who’s tried it suddenly realises that anything you put in the ocean is almost immediately covered in marine growth, or destroyed by the ocean itself.

And that wave / tidal energy is very diffuse, or that where it isn’t diffuse it’s also extremely destructive.

Baseload nuclear is entirely feckless as a backup for a renewable grid. You either go with a long term storage technology (and then don't need nuclear), or you go to an entirely nuclear grid. Wind/solar and nuclear don't mix well.

It's not net zero, but nearly zero will probably do fine?

Politicians like to say net zero, but when we are 90% there will we maybe not stop caring and find other more pressing problems?

The real issue is the cost of keeping gas peaker stations around that are mostly idle and fire up only a few days a year, but that's an economic issue, not an engineering one.

In the longer term, you could even run them off net-zero renewable syngas that you make the rest of the year using low-cost electrical power at peak solar generation times; you only need to store a relatively small amount of it, and old fossil fuel reservoirs are ideal for this.

Use the excess power in summer for some kind of industrial use.

But yes, resistively heated ultra low capex thermal storage ("hot dirt") is very attractive.

I just checked our stats. Average consumption 16kWh/day. Sunny summer day we get 30-40kWh. Sunny winter day 10-20kWh. Cloudy winter day it's 0.5-2kWh.

Also that's without a heat pump... Which you mainly use in the winter.

And without an electric car but I doubt they're as big of an issue because you can charge them from cheap overnight power anyway.

Lowest possible fixed costs, high operating costs.

Which given the history of CCS likely would be a ploy from the fossil industry to just keep emitting.

To see the effect of including such, go to https://model.energy

Using a long term storage technology (in addition to wind/solar/batteries) can cut the cost in half at high latitudes.

It’s a lot easier to store and transport than hydrogen and the capital items already exist.

Curtailment fees should be replaced with purchases of green LNG.

Another option is ammonia, which is quite nasty to deal with.

However, as seen above, there are lots and lots of ways to store (or equivalent) power over long periods, it's just the economic incentive to build them that is needed - and is now on the way. Renewable-gas low-duty-cycle gas peakers, Carnot batteries, and sodium-ion batteries are top candidates, with the first being the low-hanging fruit because they already exist.

It really doesn't. Clouds absolutely kill solar. In the winter we get 10-20kWh/day on sunny days and 0.5-2kWh/day on cloudy days.

I dunno where you got that info but it's dead wrong.

Lol give over. Who told you that - solar panel companies? Companies selling holidays to the UK?

You ever been to England?

It's not a scam, it's a weapon. The same proliferation arguments that have been used against nuclear also apply to space-based solar.