We had a hydro electric powered aluminium smelting plant. In the 50's & 60's Scotland was well on its way to developing greater hydro electric capacity, it would seem to the chagrin of Westminster. Our geology and terrain lends itself ideally to Hydro Electric Power. Wind, Solar & Tidal Energy also dovetails perfectly with that strategy. Why would anyone with such cheap abundant possible energy potential right before them, want to have diesel generator back ups when building a far more robust grid with Energy Export potential could power the Nation beyond fossil fuel horizons. Fossil fuels require rationing for area's of the economy that presently have no alternative, farming, military etc
So we destroy the Scottish natural environment for sea birds and whales building a low density energy source then we sterilise the land to store the power? There’s nothing Green about that.
Let’s see your math on how much land is needed to store 40GW of renewable energy for a week?
Opponents of solar and wind often claim that they're intermittent and unreliable, but these arguments are stuck in the 2000s and don't reflect the reality of modern renewable energy systems.
For example, Simon Michaux has made the claim that a fully renewable energy grid would require weeks of battery storage to avoid intermittency and provide a steady supply. This position is completely confused because it assumes that grid management somehow comes down only to battery storage at a given location alone, completely ignoring the entangled and interdependent nature of modern power systems. Grid operators simply don't need to use batteries for seasonal supply storage. Under normal grid conditions, batteries need to store at most a few hours of electricity for everything to run smoothly. Studies from Stanford and NLR (formerly NREL) show that you can have an effective and reliable grid by over-stacking wind and solar facilities (meaning you build more than you think you might need), deploying electricity with HVDCs, and by using diversified storage methods like pumped hydro and VPPs (such as Tesla Powerwalls, EVs, and commercial battery units), not to mention demand response. A major 2024 paper in Nature led by Jin Zhao concluded that blackout intensities and and extreme weather vulnerabilities were actually lower in grids with high penetration of renewable energy sources compared to those with low penetration.
And today, plenty of real-world examples, from the massive Gansu wind farm complex in China to the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia, prove that you can produce and deliver reliable, flexible, round-the-clock electricity to the grid using purely renewable energy systems. A big part of the reason for this success is because battery storage capacity has exploded like a volcano across much of the Western world and East Asia over the past 5 years. That explosion combined with other diversified forms of storage and capacity has meant that many of the prior issues with wind and solar adoption are simply no longer a major concern, and not a concern at all in some places. Given their current reliability and capacity for rapid scaling and deployment, solar and wind need to be front and center in our energy transition. Hydro is also critical, and nuclear can be used to supplement these three leaders to a small extent. The point is that by now all of the old arguments against solar and wind are absolutely stale and inaccurate. These energy systems have proven their worth under extreme stress and heavy requirements in large modern grids, especially in China, and there's simply no good reason to bet against them at this point, other than the kind of blind and reflexive ideological opposition being shown by the Trump administration. Renewables are the future. Myths about them are the past.
Michael this is just Green slop. The industrial energy bills and diesel generators needed tell the real story. Scotland doesn’t have the interconnector capacity to cover doldrums from external firm energy sources. Firm energy that would come from nuclear, gas and/or coal. Why not build that firm capacity here instead of stacking flacky energy ever higher?
We had a hydro electric powered aluminium smelting plant. In the 50's & 60's Scotland was well on its way to developing greater hydro electric capacity, it would seem to the chagrin of Westminster. Our geology and terrain lends itself ideally to Hydro Electric Power. Wind, Solar & Tidal Energy also dovetails perfectly with that strategy. Why would anyone with such cheap abundant possible energy potential right before them, want to have diesel generator back ups when building a far more robust grid with Energy Export potential could power the Nation beyond fossil fuel horizons. Fossil fuels require rationing for area's of the economy that presently have no alternative, farming, military etc
So we destroy the Scottish natural environment for sea birds and whales building a low density energy source then we sterilise the land to store the power? There’s nothing Green about that.
Let’s see your math on how much land is needed to store 40GW of renewable energy for a week?
Opponents of solar and wind often claim that they're intermittent and unreliable, but these arguments are stuck in the 2000s and don't reflect the reality of modern renewable energy systems.
For example, Simon Michaux has made the claim that a fully renewable energy grid would require weeks of battery storage to avoid intermittency and provide a steady supply. This position is completely confused because it assumes that grid management somehow comes down only to battery storage at a given location alone, completely ignoring the entangled and interdependent nature of modern power systems. Grid operators simply don't need to use batteries for seasonal supply storage. Under normal grid conditions, batteries need to store at most a few hours of electricity for everything to run smoothly. Studies from Stanford and NLR (formerly NREL) show that you can have an effective and reliable grid by over-stacking wind and solar facilities (meaning you build more than you think you might need), deploying electricity with HVDCs, and by using diversified storage methods like pumped hydro and VPPs (such as Tesla Powerwalls, EVs, and commercial battery units), not to mention demand response. A major 2024 paper in Nature led by Jin Zhao concluded that blackout intensities and and extreme weather vulnerabilities were actually lower in grids with high penetration of renewable energy sources compared to those with low penetration.
And today, plenty of real-world examples, from the massive Gansu wind farm complex in China to the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia, prove that you can produce and deliver reliable, flexible, round-the-clock electricity to the grid using purely renewable energy systems. A big part of the reason for this success is because battery storage capacity has exploded like a volcano across much of the Western world and East Asia over the past 5 years. That explosion combined with other diversified forms of storage and capacity has meant that many of the prior issues with wind and solar adoption are simply no longer a major concern, and not a concern at all in some places. Given their current reliability and capacity for rapid scaling and deployment, solar and wind need to be front and center in our energy transition. Hydro is also critical, and nuclear can be used to supplement these three leaders to a small extent. The point is that by now all of the old arguments against solar and wind are absolutely stale and inaccurate. These energy systems have proven their worth under extreme stress and heavy requirements in large modern grids, especially in China, and there's simply no good reason to bet against them at this point, other than the kind of blind and reflexive ideological opposition being shown by the Trump administration. Renewables are the future. Myths about them are the past.
Michael this is just Green slop. The industrial energy bills and diesel generators needed tell the real story. Scotland doesn’t have the interconnector capacity to cover doldrums from external firm energy sources. Firm energy that would come from nuclear, gas and/or coal. Why not build that firm capacity here instead of stacking flacky energy ever higher?
It's not green slop, it's utilising all possibilities and exploring future advances in technology.
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