Keith Anderson, Scottish Power chief executive told energy correspondent Jillian Ambrose exciting news on June 10, 2019. “Batteries will take renewable energy to the next level, he explained. “It is a nice, neat solution to help use more and more renewable power in the UK. That’s because that’s what we need to be doing to reach a net zero-carbon economy.”
Scottish Power Unlocks Europe’s ‘Most Ambitious Project’
Scottish Power plans to install a half-football-pitch-size fifty-megawatt battery at Whitelee onshore windfarm on the Isle of Arran. This will be the prototype for at least five more at other renewable energy sites.
This will empower Whitelee to generate even more power. Because the giant battery will store production at night. And release it in the morning when Scotland’s homeowners and businesses get going with the new day.
“Over a period of time we will use much more wind output from the project,” Keith Anderson says. “That’s because even at times of low demand we will be able to capture far more of the wind.”
Half-Football-Pitch-Size Battery Will Smooth Power Fluctuations
The UK’s “quite clunky” energy system experiences second-by-second fluctuations according to Jillian Ambrose. She says the Whitelee onshore windfarm battery and those that follow will help smooth these out.
“They can react in milliseconds and are incredibly useful as a virtually instantaneous tool for the energy system operator.” So says Scottish Power chief executive Keith Anderson. Therefore, all-in-all this seems to be a project to watch carefully when construction begins early in 2020. By the end of 2020 Scottish Power should be increasingly independent of four fossil-fuel power plants it sold off in 2018.
“Over the next ten to twenty years batteries will become a much more important part of the system. We want to start this now,” Keith Anderson says. And we add ‘more power to his elbow in a greener Scotland’.
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