Goldman Sachs advert

[IanMacdonald]

Just happened to see this Goldman Sachs commercial which is showing as an advert on YouTube:



The claims it makes for for wind energy just seem to be totally OTT.

Produces maximum output at 10kt windspeed? The energy in wind rises as the cube of the speed, so to design a turbine like that would be crazy.  It would mean wasting 7/8 of the remaining of the energy in a 20kt wind.

Also implies that Grid-scale energy storage WILL be available.

Sachs, who have bought over part of Dong Energy,  have already been in legal trouble:



I think they need to be called on to justify these claims.

[woody]

What do you expect? It is a bank. If they could make money selling their grandmothers they would be on Ebay. I find it quite refreshing that they at least seem to have grasped that an energy transition is under way, that it is self-accelerating and that it will have a big impact on all of us. Try explaining this to Shell. Or our governments.

[tggzzz]

It would mean wasting 7/8 of the remaining of the energy in a 20kt wind.

To highlight the pointlessness of that calculation, it would be wasting 99.9% of the energy in a 100kt wind.

A more useful statistic would be what proportion of the time will it be generating its rated output.

[NivagSwerdna]

I was driving in my car (diesel) the other day and listened to this... http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096jb29  You might have to register to listen but I found it very interesting.  re: Batteries and future electricity distribution.

[IanMacdonald]

To highlight the pointlessness of that calculation, it would be wasting 99.9% of the energy in a 100kt wind.

A more useful statistic would be what proportion of the time will it be generating its rated output.

Not pointless at all, because 20kt winds are common and 100kt winds are rare. So, you are going to build a machine of EIGHT TIMES the nominal capacity -which means a blade swept area eight times larger, after all you can't get something for nothing- just so it can maintain that nameplate output down to 10kt winds? Which will not help if it's a 5kt wind anyway, because that has so little energy it's not worth collecting.

If you stop and think about this for a moment, it's equivalent to building half a terawatt of conventional plant to supply the UK with a peak demand of 60GW. An insanely inefficjent arrangement. 

As for Grid-scale battery storage, there are scientists trying to develop this, true. There is currently no commercial product though. The nearest thing to it is Tesla's Powerwall, with which it would cost a cool trillion to back up the UK Grid for just one week of nil wind.  To claim that battery storage WILL be a game changer is snake oil selling, because it is not yet even known if it can be done, let alone at any sensible cost.

There are also scientists trying to develop cold fusion. (LENR)  There is currently no commercial fusion reactor though, apart from Rossi's somewhat dubious products. Would you consider it acceptable to demand that energy policies are based on the fact that the E-Cat WILL take over the energy market entirely in five years? Or, would you want to wait until a full proof of concept was available? 

[tggzzz]

To highlight the pointlessness of that calculation, it would be wasting 99.9% of the energy in a 100kt wind.

A more useful statistic would be what proportion of the time will it be generating its rated output.

Not pointless at all, because 20kt winds are common and 100kt winds are rare. So, you are going to build a machine of EIGHT TIMES the nominal capacity -which means a blade swept area eight times larger, after all you can't get something for nothing- just so it can maintain that nameplate output down to 10kt winds? Which will not help if it's a 5kt wind anyway, because that has so little energy it's not worth collecting.

If you stop and think about this for a moment, it's equivalent to building half a terawatt of conventional plant to supply the UK with a peak demand of 60GW. An insanely inefficjent arrangement. 

As for Grid-scale battery storage, there are scientists trying to develop this, true. There is currently no commercial product though. The nearest thing to it is Tesla's Powerwall, with which it would cost a cool trillion to back up the UK Grid for just one week of nil wind.  To claim that battery storage WILL be a game changer is snake oil selling, because it is not yet even known if it can be done, let alone at any sensible cost.

There are also scientists trying to develop cold fusion. (LENR)  There is currently no commercial fusion reactor though, apart from Rossi's somewhat dubious products. Would you consider it acceptable to demand that energy policies are based on the fact that the E-Cat WILL take over the energy market entirely in five years? Or, would you want to wait until a full proof of concept was available? 

You are missing the points...

You chose a different but still arbitrary windspeed.

A key problem with the existing installed windpower is the variability of its output. For current UK installed plant and based on the output shown in gridwatch, there is a remarkably simple rule of thumb. The output will be below X% of peak for about X% of the time. Hence it will be <10% of peak for 10% of the year (36 days), etc.

Now a major problem of windpower (and tidal and solar) is what to do when it isn't available: the "dispatch problem". Currently the green brigade completely ignores the cost of keeping conventional plant available for the times when the green plant isn't doing its job. That's deceptive and, IMHO, needs to be corrected.

One way of reducing the dispatch problem would be to ensure that green plant has a higher availability. That can be achieved by by ensuring windpower continues to generate useful power at lower windspeeds. Yes, that probably means it won't be able to generate as much power at higher windspeeds, but that's a separate issue.

I'm all in favour of reliable windpower that we can depend on, since that will enable us to reduce our dependence on gas/coal/oil. In the absence of that, I want the cost of keeping the conventional plant available to be included in the cost of green power.

[Marco]

Dispatch problem gets solved automatically with cost reductions, when renewable electricity gets cheaper than buying coal it doesn't really matter if you need the backup. It just pushes break even a little further into the future.

[tggzzz]

Dispatch problem gets solved automatically with cost reductions,

No, it isnt., unless you install ridiculous overcapacity. All you have to do is look at the measured generated power statistics on gridwatch.

Start by defining the capacity required to ensure green plant is sufficient to ensure that we only lose power for one day per year. Then calculate the cost of keeping conventional plant available for that one day.

[Marco]

No, it isnt., unless you install ridiculous overcapacity.

If it saves money investors won't care about what you think is ridiculous. When renewables are cheaper than fuel for a coal plant they'll get used, without subsidy. We aren't there, for a significant percentage of elecitricty, but we're getting close. If it means keeping the plant on standby for all but one day in a year, that's just what they'll do.

[tggzzz]

No, it isnt., unless you install ridiculous overcapacity.

If it saves money investors won't care about what you think is ridiculous. When renewables are cheaper than fuel for a coal plant they'll get used, without subsidy. We aren't there, but we're getting close. If it means keeping the plant on standby for all but one day in a year, that's just what they'll do.

Whether or not it saves money depends on what is included and excluded. Greenwashers are good at excluding anything inconvenient.

If you ask a good accountant "what is 2+2?", a poor accountant answers "4", but a good accountant answers "what do you want it to be".

If the costs of ensuring adequate dispatch a mouth are included in the costs of windpower, I'll be content. Normally they aren't.

[Someone]

If the costs of ensuring adequate dispatch a mouth are included in the costs of windpower, I'll be content. Normally they aren't.

Dispatchable electrical energy storage is already profitable in the current electricity markets of Australia (and the UK) but its less profitable on 5 to 10 year terms than building open cycle gas turbines, so investment has been on that instead. As gas continues to rise in price storage will come on strong and become the next investment phase.

entirely separate clause....

Renewable generation is profitable at current market rates, the almost zero marginal costs of generation make it a longer investment but still its profitable at current rates. It doesn't need storage to make it profitable or desirable to the market.

You might not like rising consumer prices, but its levelling out the fluctuations in the wholesale market.

[tggzzz]

If the costs of ensuring adequate dispatch a mouth are included in the costs of windpower, I'll be content. Normally they aren't.

Dispatchable electrical energy storage is already profitable in the current electricity markets of Australia (and the UK) but its less profitable on 5 to 10 year terms than building open cycle gas turbines, so investment has been on that instead. As gas continues to rise in price storage will come on strong and become the next investment phase.

The UK energy storage capacity is extremely limited: 33GWh, or about 1 hour of national consumption. Currently it has only three practical justifications:

• to supply short-term peaks, minutes, not hours and certainly not days; classic case is when a TV programme ends and everyone switches on their kettles
• black-start capability: if the entire network fails, then this is used to get the first power station running again. Fortunately we haven't had a Carrington even recently
• for very small-scale remote communities, classically the Scottish islands

The person that develops practical large scale storage of electricity in the UK will become as rich as Croesus.

entirely separate clause....

Renewable generation is profitable at current market rates, the almost zero marginal costs of generation make it a longer investment but still its profitable at current rates. It doesn't need storage to make it profitable or desirable to the market.

If you ignoring the subsidies, that may be true. I don't object to subsidies, but I do object to "conveniently" omitting them from subsequent justifications.

You might not like rising consumer prices, but its levelling out the fluctuations in the wholesale market.

What I dislike is not having electricity coming out the wall. Given current policies, that is increasingly likely. Doubly so if some of the greenwash arguments are believed and acted upon.

[Marco]

practical large scale storage of electricity

As long as lousy round trip efficiency doesn't impact practicality it's not that difficult, so again a problem which can be solved by renewable energy just getting cheap enough. If the current subsidy systems persist for long (ie. electricity having negative cost during peak renewable generation) we might see this happening ... although in the near future I'd expect aluminium smelters to build plants which can cost effectively operate at lower duty cycles first (aluminium being solidified electricity).

[tggzzz]

practical large scale storage of electricity

As long as lousy round trip efficiency doesn't impact practicality it's not that difficult

Really? Please provide pointers to such installed live plant.

N.B. pumped storage or other hydro is difficult in the UK; a 2000ft peak is officially a mountain, and there aren't many of those.

[woody]

I find it remarkable that everybody always points to the subsidy renewables need to operate, but few people recognize that fossil fuels are subsidized much, much heavier and for as long as we can remember.

As fossil fuel subsidy becomes more and more under pressure due to pressing environmental/climate/geopolitical issues and the latest wind turbines manage to generate electricity at a profit without any subsidy, I think that the future is very bright for renewables.

This does not mean we're out of trouble; due to aforementioned problems with renewables (lack of storage) in the short term we will have to get accustomed to the fact that energy is not a dead cheap and virtually endless resource. There will be moments that no (affordable) electricity will be coming out of the wall.

[IanMacdonald]

I'm amazed at the number of posters saying basically, "It doesn't matter if we exaggerate the capability of these products so long as that results in them receiving backing." The only important thing, it seems, being to get these products accepted. Come what may.

The obvious flaw in this approach is that if they do get backed to the absolute hilt and then still fail to do the job that's required of them, where does that leave us? 

In principle we might as well pour an equal amount of money into fusion, thorium, or even cold fusion. We don't know if those can be made to work either, but the rewards from success would be far greater.

[Someone]

N.B. pumped storage or other hydro is difficult in the UK; a 2000ft peak is officially a mountain, and there aren't many of those.

Pumped hydro can be effective and profitable with just 50-100m (a few hundred feet) of head, or use pumped tidal pools in estuaries or other low depth areas. The existing pumped hydro in Australia and the UK uses only a small portion of the available dams, and on those dams only a small portion of the available volume. Its all tradeoffs between storage capacity, water security, blackstart reserves, and environmental concerns, etc so there are no clear boundaries to whats possible. Solid references (for instance "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air") suggest enormous potential in the UK.

If the costs of ensuring adequate dispatch a mouth are included in the costs of windpower, I'll be content. Normally they aren't.

Dispatchable electrical energy storage is already profitable in the current electricity markets of Australia (and the UK) but its less profitable on 5 to 10 year terms than building open cycle gas turbines, so investment has been on that instead. As gas continues to rise in price storage will come on strong and become the next investment phase.

The UK energy storage capacity is extremely limited: 33GWh, or about 1 hour of national consumption. Currently it has only three practical justifications:

• to supply short-term peaks, minutes, not hours and certainly not days; classic case is when a TV programme ends and everyone switches on their kettles
• black-start capability: if the entire network fails, then this is used to get the first power station running again. Fortunately we haven't had a Carrington even recently
• for very small-scale remote communities, classically the Scottish islands

The person that develops practical large scale storage of electricity in the UK will become as rich as Croesus.

Installed energy storage is limited in scale, your own reference says just for pumped hydro that "significant potential still exists in the UK" along with all the other technologies available. There are abundant resources ready to exploit for storage, it just needs investment with a longer term view to put money into it. Along with your 3 useful values for storage a system will create profit for the operator every day on the wholesale energy market, there is already enough price variation in the UK market to run storage on a daily cycle and make a profitable investment on that alone. Australia has even larger daily variations and seasonal extremes from heavy use of air conditioning which increase profitability of all dispatchable plants.

You might not like rising consumer prices, but its levelling out the fluctuations in the wholesale market.

What I dislike is not having electricity coming out the wall. Given current policies, that is increasingly likely. Doubly so if some of the greenwash arguments are believed and acted upon.

When have you been in a rolling blackout/brownout? Its not fallen apart yet and yes things need to be designed in ahead of any major problems but that could be storage or more interconnect capacity, or a different mix of power plants. Fossil fuels are naturally pricing themselves out of the market because of fuel costs, competing demand for the fuel resource just as there is competing demand for the land space needed for mines, renewable energy, farming, etc.

Australia is running close to the limit on generation capacity compared to peak demand (provisioning of 120%, similar to the UK figure of 130%) because of uncertainty in the future of the energy market, people wont invest in storage (or generation) if potential profits there could be capped by the government in the interests of keeping power prices artificially low. The pitfalls of a not completely free or completely controlled market where the tension between the two leaves it in an inefficient state.

[tggzzz]

You might not like rising consumer prices, but its levelling out the fluctuations in the wholesale market.

What I dislike is not having electricity coming out the wall. Given current policies, that is increasingly likely. Doubly so if some of the greenwash arguments are believed and acted upon.

When have you been in a rolling blackout/brownout?

Many many times, mostly but not exclusively in the UK. I well remember revising for exams that would determine the course of my life by candlelight. Not something I want to repeat.

Its not fallen apart yet and yes things need to be designed in ahead of any major problems but that could be storage or more interconnect capacity, or a different mix of power plants.

You seem not to be familiar with the situation in the UK. Last I heard, there was <5% excess capacity, so that if >1 one large plant had unplanned downtime, the lights would have gone out. The formal "notices of insufficiency" (i.e. be prepared for cuts) have been becoming more frequent.

In addition, I have been to local professional I.E.T. meetings where the engineers directly concerned and involved in this explicitly made the point that the lights will go out, for any of several reasons.

And nobody has considered the effects of widespread electric cars.

Fossil fuels are naturally pricing themselves out of the market because of fuel costs, competing demand for the fuel resource just as there is competing demand for the land space needed for mines, renewable energy, farming, etc.

That's precisely the kind of accountancy jiggery-pokery that I'm talking about.

Australia is...

I make no comments about Australia.

[Someone]

You might not like rising consumer prices, but its levelling out the fluctuations in the wholesale market.

What I dislike is not having electricity coming out the wall. Given current policies, that is increasingly likely. Doubly so if some of the greenwash arguments are believed and acted upon.

When have you been in a rolling blackout/brownout?

Many many times, mostly but not exclusively in the UK. I well remember revising for exams that would determine the course of my life by candlelight. Not something I want to repeat.

Still dodging specifics?
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/444213/The-Last-Big-Blackout-40-years-ago-the-lights-really-did-go-off
1970's was an eternity ago, and despite fossil fuel plants with sufficient capacity they ran out of affordable fuel during worldwide political shenanigans. So how do you prevent that sort of scenario? Energy independence, perhaps with renewables and storage? Or do you have in mind some new energy resource the UK has already but not exploited?

Fossil fuels are naturally pricing themselves out of the market because of fuel costs, competing demand for the fuel resource just as there is competing demand for the land space needed for mines, renewable energy, farming, etc.

That's precisely the kind of accountancy jiggery-pokery that I'm talking about.

Thats the realities of a market economy, if you want more reliable power you can pay for it, such contracts already exist and are available to the public.

[tggzzz]

N.B. pumped storage or other hydro is difficult in the UK; a 2000ft peak is officially a mountain, and there aren't many of those.

Pumped hydro can be effective and profitable with just 50-100m (a few hundred feet) of head, or use pumped tidal pools in estuaries or other low depth areas.

Storage in estuaries is a disreputable claim. Such "batteries" will naturally be replenished when the tide next comes in, so if you want to count them as useful storage of excess wind power, it has to be with two significant conditions:

• it has to be the right time of day to store and use the energy; at other times it is impossible
• any such stored energy has to be used within a couple of hours, before the tide comes in; not much use for wind power outages lasting days due to a blocking high pressure zone

The existing pumped hydro in Australia and the UK uses only a small portion of the available dams, and on those dams only a small portion of the available volume.

Australia maybe, but that certainly isn't the case in the UK.

Its all tradeoffs between storage capacity, water security, blackstart reserves, and environmental concerns, etc so there are no clear boundaries to whats possible. Solid references (for instance "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air") suggest enormous potential in the UK.

You evidently haven't read/understood "Without Hot Air". The second page of chapter 1 contains this important point describing a primary motivation for MacKay writing the book in the first place:

Code: [Select]

“We have a huge amount of wave and wind.” The trouble with this sort of language is
that it’s not sufficient to know that something is huge: we need to know how the one
“huge” compares with another “huge,” namely our huge energy consumption.
To make this comparison, we need numbers, not adjectives.

OK, you use the word "enormous" rather than "huge", but that doesn't change MacKay's point.

Please be aware that your situation in Australia may be very different to the UK situation.

[tggzzz]

You might not like rising consumer prices, but its levelling out the fluctuations in the wholesale market.

What I dislike is not having electricity coming out the wall. Given current policies, that is increasingly likely. Doubly so if some of the greenwash arguments are believed and acted upon.

When have you been in a rolling blackout/brownout?

Many many times, mostly but not exclusively in the UK. I well remember revising for exams that would determine the course of my life by candlelight. Not something I want to repeat.

Still dodging specifics?

Nonsense; now you're just trying to change your point in a stupid way.

You had a presumption which I definitively showed was false. That's not dodging specifics, it is pointing out that you didn't conceive of the reality.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/444213/The-Last-Big-Blackout-40-years-ago-the-lights-really-did-go-off
1970's was an eternity ago, and despite fossil fuel plants with sufficient capacity they ran out of affordable fuel during worldwide political shenanigans. So how do you prevent that sort of scenario? Energy independence, perhaps with renewables and storage? Or do you have in mind some new energy resource the UK has already but not exploited?

If it was "an eternity ago", I wouldn't remember it.

Your other points are merely an attempt to deflect attention from your false conception.

Fossil fuels are naturally pricing themselves out of the market because of fuel costs, competing demand for the fuel resource just as there is competing demand for the land space needed for mines, renewable energy, farming, etc.

That's precisely the kind of accountancy jiggery-pokery that I'm talking about.

Thats the realities of a market economy, if you want more reliable power you can pay for it, such contracts already exist and are available to the public.

Are you saying that jiggery-pokery is the reality of a market economy? If not, then what are you trying to say?

If the generating plant and capacity is not available, then I can't get electricity no matter how much I might be prepared to pay for it. Don't forget the "<5% excess capacity" and "notices of insufficiency".

Never underestimate the shortsightedness, self interest, and general ineptitude of politicians - particularly when they don't want to hear reality.

[tggzzz]

If the costs of ensuring adequate dispatch a mouth are included in the costs of windpower, I'll be content. Normally they aren't.

Dispatchable electrical energy storage is already profitable in the current electricity markets of Australia (and the UK) but its less profitable on 5 to 10 year terms than building open cycle gas turbines, so investment has been on that instead. As gas continues to rise in price storage will come on strong and become the next investment phase.

The UK energy storage capacity is extremely limited: 33GWh, or about 1 hour of national consumption. Currently it has only three practical justifications:

• to supply short-term peaks, minutes, not hours and certainly not days; classic case is when a TV programme ends and everyone switches on their kettles
• black-start capability: if the entire network fails, then this is used to get the first power station running again. Fortunately we haven't had a Carrington even recently
• for very small-scale remote communities, classically the Scottish islands

The person that develops practical large scale storage of electricity in the UK will become as rich as Croesus.

Installed energy storage is limited in scale, your own reference says just for pumped hydro that "significant potential still exists in the UK" along with all the other technologies available. There are abundant resources ready to exploit for storage, it just needs investment with a longer term view to put money into it. Along with your 3 useful values for storage a system will create profit for the operator every day on the wholesale energy market, there is already enough price variation in the UK market to run storage on a daily cycle and make a profitable investment on that alone.

If that really was the case, why hasn't it already been done?

Australia has even larger daily variations and seasonal extremes from heavy use of air conditioning which increase profitability of all dispatchable plants.

Most people recognise that Australia != UK.

[Someone]

N.B. pumped storage or other hydro is difficult in the UK; a 2000ft peak is officially a mountain, and there aren't many of those.

Pumped hydro can be effective and profitable with just 50-100m (a few hundred feet) of head, or use pumped tidal pools in estuaries or other low depth areas.

Storage in estuaries is a disreputable claim. Such "batteries" will naturally be replenished when the tide next comes in, so if you want to count them as useful storage of excess wind power, it has to be with two significant conditions:

• it has to be the right time of day to store and use the energy; at other times it is impossible
• any such stored energy has to be used within a couple of hours, before the tide comes in; not much use for wind power outages lasting days due to a blocking high pressure zone

This old chestnut, you can store and dispatch energy from tidal storage at any planned time. There are no times when it is impossible to produce energy to schedule. Yes it will produce less energy if you demand more storage from the system, and/or reduce the storage capacity if you want it at a specific time, but these are the balances and tradeoffs that also exist to a lesser extent in conventional land based pumped hydro. For tidal systems the energy can be stored either as an empty or full reservoir for moving water to or from on demand, its the scheduling that makes it work as storage rather than a simple generator.

Most people recognise that Australia != UK.

Which is why I carefully described both and didn't make any blanket statements.

You evidently haven't read/understood "Without Hot Air". The second page of chapter 1 contains this important point describing a primary motivation for MacKay writing the book in the first place

Other than conversing with the Author and contributing to the work, I have also read it. It presents with great technical detail and accuracy technologies and limitations that could provide energy for the UK, you can see all sorts of possible ways froward from its examples. Finding storage to back a 100% renewable electricity grid for the UK is plausible, and profitable, it may not be cheaper for the consumer or more profitable for the operators than the nuclear or gas plants but of the 5 technically feasible energy plans for the UK presented in the book 1 was 100% renewable. There is much detail in the book on the current state of the UKs energy storage infrastructure, and what opportunities are available hence why I referred to it on that specific point.

Fossil fuels are naturally pricing themselves out of the market because of fuel costs, competing demand for the fuel resource just as there is competing demand for the land space needed for mines, renewable energy, farming, etc.

That's precisely the kind of accountancy jiggery-pokery that I'm talking about.

Thats the realities of a market economy, if you want more reliable power you can pay for it, such contracts already exist and are available to the public.

Are you saying that jiggery-pokery is the reality of a market economy? If not, then what are you trying to say?

If the generating plant and capacity is not available, then I can't get electricity no matter how much I might be prepared to pay for it. Don't forget the "<5% excess capacity" and "notices of insufficiency".

Never underestimate the shortsightedness, self interest, and general ineptitude of politicians - particularly when they don't want to hear reality.

When has the UK grid gone completely dark? Thats the event when zero electricity is available at any cost, if you're willing to pay for it either though supply contracts or local storage you can have all the reliability you want. But if you want to stick with lowest cost options, they are less reliable and subject to rolling blackouts to shed power when demand exceeds supply. Why are residences put into blackout? Because they are the lowest cost on the supplier to curtail, contracts plain and simple.

The existing pumped hydro in Australia and the UK uses only a small portion of the available dams, and on those dams only a small portion of the available volume.

Australia maybe, but that certainly isn't the case in the UK.

Energy storage in the UK totals 33GWh from your reference, Dinorwig alone has approximately 10.4GWh of that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_projects, other references make it 9-10GW) yet its not cycled to that depth routinely (ever?) and the working capacity is around half the theoretical capacity and even that isn't cycled daily. Water is retained in the system for drought relief, flood control, and other water management reasons as discussed above there are competing demands on water in dams beyond electricity storage. The Ffestiniog plant similarly uses less than the full storage capacity available to it.

The British Hydropower Association sees at least a doubling in capacity from already identified resources:
http://www.british-hydro.org/hydro_in_the_uk
GIS studies can find enormous potential for hydro,
be it pumped:
https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/sites/jrcsh/files/jrc_20130503_assessment_european_phs_potential.pdf
or otherwise:
http://www.british-hydro.org/UK%20Hydro%20Resource/England%20and%20Wales%20Resource%20Study%20Oct%202010.pdf

[Marco]

Really? Please provide pointers to such installed live plant.

Shall we judge nuclear energy by unsubsidised new builds then? Whether something is practical is different from it being an interesting investment.

N.B. pumped storage or other hydro is difficult in the UK; a 2000ft peak is officially a mountain, and there aren't many of those.

Hydro has great efficiency too. Thermal storage and using hydrogen from electrolysis stored in mines not so much. The INGRID project has a tiny little hydrogen storage demonstrator in Italy though.

[Someone]

N.B. pumped storage or other hydro is difficult in the UK; a 2000ft peak is officially a mountain, and there aren't many of those.

Hydro has great efficiency too. Thermal storage and using hydrogen from electrolysis stored in mines not so much. The INGRID project has a tiny little hydrogen storage demonstrator in Italy though.

Compressed gas is coming along quickly, as are batteries, so there are other options but there are private companies investing in hydro even through the uncertainties:
http://www.quarrybatterycompany.com/what-we-do.html
with some interesting insight here:
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/issues/march-2015-digi-issue/pumped-storage-a-new-project-for-wales/

But it seems this has all been done before and tggzzz will happily post nonsense that is easily proven wrong:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/tidal-lagoon-energy-from-the-ocean-uk-gov-is-putting-money-in-it/?all
and then repeat it all here after being throughly disproven already. There are many ways forward and few of them should be ignored, a diverse mix of distributed generation and storage is the way to a secure and reliable source of energy.