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UtILItY WeeK | 19th - 25th September 2014 | 21 Finance & Investment Japan currently has the world's first pumped storage scheme using the sea as the lower lagoon. Creating it has meant solv- ing multiple practical challenges, but if the model was to be applied in Britain, there are many coastal sites that could host pumped hydro storage. With the application of appropriate tech- nology to such challenging locations, part- nered by decisive leadership and action from the government, it is feasible that an additional 13GW of pumped storage could be created. This would go a considerable way towards meeting the need for perhaps 15GW of storage by 2030 that was identified in a 2012 report on energy storage by Imperial College London. The UK badly needs short-term, fast reac- tion balancing services to help satisfy peaks in demand, and to charge up when genera- tion output is high but demand is low. It also needs longer-term storage to deliver staying power during extended windless, sunless periods. There is no single answer to Brit- ain's storage question, and it is wrong to characterise contending storage technolo- gies as being in a race for dominance. The UK should deploy more pumped hydro now to bridge the storage gap. At the same time it should continue to encour- age promising alternative technologies that might, within a ten-year timeframe, be capa- ble of providing complementary back-up in the form of long-duration or distributed storage. Successive governments have ignored storage, but with costs rising and generation intermittency getting worse, continuing to kick the can down the road is not an option. Building more grid-scale storage will take seven to ten years. Britain's electricity consumers and bill payers need the govern- ment to grasp the nettle, state what storage is required, and create the transparent and commercially fair framework within which investors, developers and construction com- panies can operate in confidence to get the job done. Dave Holmes, managing director, Quarry Battery Company Graph shows how curtailment costs and storage installation costs imply an optimal amount of storage to be connected. The question is – what does this mean for the UK? *The Triad season is a four-month winter period, during which National Grid looks back to find the three half-hour periods when electricity demand was highest in the UK. These are known as the Triad demand periods. National Grid then uses this information to set a capacity charge for each local electricity network operator across the UK. a BiG Gap To fill portugal is working to a formula of 1GW of storage for every 3GW of renewable generation. If the UK applied the same formula, 2.8GW of storage would equate to: 2GW shortfall in current storage 6GW shortfall in storage by 2020 15GW amount of storage needed by 2013, according to a 2012 report by Imperial College London The STorY BY nuMBerS The coST of uK enerGY SToraGe System curtailment costs Installed energy storage Source: Quarry Battery Curtailment costs Storage costs System cost T he Thames Tideway Tunnel has been, and will remain for many, controversial. Is it the right scheme? Will it work? Is it over-engineered? Is it too expensive, etc? These are questions that accompany any big development – think airports, HS2, Crossrail. The scheme is complex, not in its concept (it is really just a large storm tank), but in the need to integrate it into a large, cluttered, busy capital city. The physical interfaces with buildings, river frontages, parks and underground infrastructure are numerous, each present- ing opportunities for clashes. Furthermore, the solutions to these clashes oen throw up other conflicts such as traffic constraints, reduction in green space, visual intrusion, noise and more. The long letter issued on 12 September by the govern- ment explains how the examining authority assessed the various issues and decided on the weight each would have for and against granting a consent. The finding is effectively that the scheme is appropri- ate because it will address the headline problem it seeks to address – reducing the frequency of sewage spills into the Thames – and that the proposal largely deals satis- factorily with the short-term and longer-term conflicts such a complex development inevitably creates. Is it expensive? Yes, but it is a great undertaking and it is considerably less costly than other large infrastruc- ture projects rolling out at the moment, like Crossrail for example. Is it over-engineered? It is intended to be well-engi- neered. Much of it will be hard to access for repairs, but people who point to this problem are not usually seek- ing to improve the tunnel's design for maintenance, but simply trying to avoid the tunnel altogether. Personally, I have not seen a competing scheme that can be done in the time, for the cost and with the secu- rity of outcome that Thames Tideway offers. It is a good solution for a most intractable problem. Certainly we should promote sustainable drainage, porous asphalt, green roofs etc but this is a matter for bylaws, regula- tion and for multiple actors including the public, and to reach critical mass will take time. On a final note: who remembers the Thames Water Ring Main? It was a visionary scheme for its time which is now invisible to most. Unknown to many, it performs its function quietly, efficiently, out of sight. But it is the backbone of the water supply to London. I suggest that the Tideway tunnel will achieve similar levels of notice and notoriety in 20 years. Mike Woolgar, managing director, Water & Environment, Atkins "I have not seen a competing scheme that can be done in the time, for the cost and with the security of outcome that Thames Tideway offers." Blog Mike Woolgar