This document discusses the role of renewables and energy storage in powering the UK electricity grid. It addresses four questions: 1) What contribution can renewables and storage make? 2) What storage technologies make sense? 3) Under what market conditions might they be implemented? 4) What keeps the lights on? The document examines various renewable and storage options and concludes that with the right market conditions, including low costs and mechanisms to capture the full value of storage, technologies like vanadium redox flow batteries could provide grid-scale distributed storage to integrate intermittent renewables into the grid by 2050 while maintaining reliability.

1. Renewables and storage,
markets and intermittency
Graham Ford
Mansion Ecopartners
1
6th Smart Grids & Cleanpower Conference
3-4 June 2014, Cambridge, UK
www.hvm-uk.com

2. Four Questions
? ? ? ?
2

3. 1.
What contribution can
renewables and storage
make to powering the
UK electricity grid?
3

4. 2.
What storage
technologies make
sense for this role?
4

5. 3.
Under what market
conditions might they
be implemented?
5

6. 4.
What keeps the lights
on?
6

7. Pathways to a lower
carbon generation mix
7
RENEWABLES
EFFICIENCY
NUCLEAR
CCS

8. Generation Issues
Intermittency! Cost!
8
RENEWABLES
EFFICIENCY
NUCLEAR
CCS
Penetration! Cost!
Safety! Capacity! Cost!
Capacity! Workable? Cost!

9. Notes from Another Island
Caribbean Island: Peak demand = X
Average demand = X/2
• PV rating = X
• Power storage rating = X/4
• Autonomy = 3 h (6 h @ X/4)
• Stable
• 30% fuel saving 9

10. 10
Notes from Another Island
Caribbean Island: Peak demand = X
Average demand = X/2
• PV rating = X
• Power storage rating = X/4
• Autonomy = 3 h (6 h @ X/4)
• Stable grid
• 30% fuel saving
JUST
ONE
PROJECT

11. Sources of value in the UK
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Absorbing the peak output:
• Less curtailment of renewables
Meeting the peak demand:
• Savings in high cost CCS CAPEX
• Savings in distribution
Greatest value – distributed storage.

12. Value potential
12
3.5 GW
2030 2050
£2bn/y
11 GW £11 bn/y
Cost of storage
£200/kW-year
(Source: www.carbontrust.com/media/129310/energy-storage-systems-role-value-strategic-assessment.pdf)

13. 13
Lithium-Ion
Fuel cells
VR Flow Battery
Pumped-hydro/CAES
Lead-Acid
1 GW
100 MW
10 MW
1 MW
100 kW
10 kW
1 kW
Seconds Minutes 1-2 hours 3-12 hours Day Month
Duration
Power
Flywheels
Mature
Deployment
Demonstration
Grid RE
Domestic
RE
Commercial
RE
Grid
Storage
UPS
Efficiency range
Fuel Cells 25-45%
Lithium 85-08%
Lead Acid 60-80%
Fly Wheel 70-95%
Comp Air 40-75%
VR Flow Batt 75%
Pump Hyd 70-85%
Grid
Services

14. Which storage technologies?
14
Electrochemical
batteries
Thermal
Compressed air
Pumped hydro Planning! Cost!
Efficiency! Cost!
Efficiency! Cost!
Resources! Cost!

15. What storage technologies?
15
VRFB
Zinc Bromine
Lead Acid
Nickel Cadmium
Lithium Ion
Sodium Nickel
Chloride
0
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Cyclescharge/discharge
Round trip efficiency
Performance comparison –
Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries vs other
electrochemical batteries

16. 16
Key features for reliability
 Power and energy independent -
scalable up to 10MW , 6+ hours
duration
 Very low maintenance –
Symmetrical Vanadium chemistry
tolerates cross membrane mixing
 Safe operation – non flammable
reactants
operating at ambient temperatures,
environmentally sound, fully
recyclable
 Very long life >10,000 cycles.
Electrolyte has 20 year life, reusable,
with high residual value
Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries

17. Vanadium Resources
Mined: – 76,000 tonnes/year
Petcoke potential: 100,000 – 200,000 t/y
Identified resources – 63,000,000 tonnes
World demand for storage by 2050: 300 W-h/person,
equivalent to 14,000,000 tonnes vanadium.
UK market for storage by 2050: 400 W-h/person
equivalent to 160,000 tonnes vanadium.
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18. Modular distributed power storage
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60 kWe/3 hour battery unit
Augment to 90 kWe
for 15 minutes
Link in 1 MWe sets
Site maintenance
Remote monitoring
20 year expected life

19. Can Vanadium Flow Batteries provide grid-
scale storage for distributed power storage?
• £200/kW-year will be achieved
before 2030:
• Design optimisation
• Volume production
• Recycled materials
• Excluding financing costs,
£200/kW-year already achieved.
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20. Market Conditions for Storage
1. Commitment to carbon reductions
2. High cost of CCS
3. Low cost of wind and solar
4. Low cost of storage
5. Rapid supply of storage
6. Market mechanisms reflect full value of
storage
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21. Start where the grid is weak
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22. Balancing generation
• Gas based generation – conventional
• Coal based generation with CCS
• Efficiency
• Demand-side management
• More interconnection
• Nuclear
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23. Renewables, storage and the rest
• Addition of storage will tend to crowd out
gas-fired CCS, due to lower cost of storage
• More than half of the UK generation
capacity could be renewables by 2050
• Storage capacity >4% of grid capacity by
2050
• Storage matches wind variability to
generation agility to preserve grid stability.
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24. Advantages of renewables+storage pathway
• Rapid implementation
• Competitive
• Least regrets
• Home grown (more balance to the
economy)
• Compatible with alternatives if
these are also successful
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25. One Big Happy Battery
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gf.mansion@gmail.com