Back in December 2013 Scottish and Southern Energy PLC (SSE) was granted planning approval for the 600 MW / 30 GWh pumped hydro storage (PHS) scheme at Coire Glas, northern Scotland. At the time I wrote a post called What makes current PHS tick?
Most pumped hydro storage schemes in countries like the UK, France and Switzerland operate in tandem with nuclear power where surplus (low price) electricity is used to pump and store water at night, every night, to supply power into the daily peak demand (high price) that in the UK occurs at 18:00±2 hours. The facilities get used every day and make money from the predictable price arbitrage that exists in wholesale electricity markets.
Low latitude solar may tick too
At low latitudes, solar PV may also be twinned with battery storage to cover the predictable diurnal cycle where surplus day time solar PV electricity may be used at night – every day and every night. And for so long as the goal is to not disconnect from the grid, this could make sense subject to prevailing electricity costs and the capital costs of installing a PV + battery system.
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It’s now day 5 of the Energy Externality Game and time to move onto the first of the new renewables, namely wind power. Loved by Green groups who see only reduced CO2 emissions, wind farms are hated by many others who see a blot on the landscape. Here at Energy Matters we normally just see high cost noise being added to a grid that needs to be balanced from second to second with some precision. This high cost noise needs to be mitigated and the cost of that mitigation is normally borne by others, not the wind farm operators.
European energy security is a subject I return to time and again normally prompted by some kind of event. This time it is severe cold weather and snow that has spread from Siberia over the whole of North and Western Europe, rather late in the season, at a time when gas storage is depleted. There are some compounding factors like the Groningen gas field in the Netherlands is substantially reduced and the UKs biggest gas storage facility – Rough – has been closed. Will the lights stay on? Probably yes, but only because governments may ask large industrial consumers to scale back or shut down their operations. At a time when social services are being cut to the bone, is this really the time for government energy policies to be eroding national GDP?
In 2009, in the comments to 
The oil price has begun 2018 strongly with Brent breaking through $70 / bbl for the first time since December 2014. OPEC+Russia+others’ discipline on production constraint remains high with ~ 1.7 Mbd production withheld from the market. The IEA reports an ~1 Mbpd stock draw in the OECD + China in 4Q 2017. IEA revisions transform the picture in the USA from one of static production to one of strong growth over the last 3 months (this undoes one of the assumptions used in my 
My friend Alex is in Chamonix in the shadow of Mont Blanc in the French Alps. He sent some very snowy pics and mentioned that it was fair dinging down. The most snow since 2010. Knowing that sunspot cycle 24 was well-advanced I did some checking and came across a web site called 
In my recent post on 
The defining division between “climate sceptics” and “greenhouse gas warmists” is the role of the Sun in causing Earth’s climate to oscillate. The anecdotal evidence for a significant solar role comes from the observation that during the Little Ice Age (LIA) sunspots were virtually absent from the Sun for a few decades – and in Europe at least it was periodically very cold. The HARD scientific evidence that backs this up comes from cosmogenic isotope variations that provide a record of solar geomagentic activity. It is surprising therefore that The Geological Society of London’s (GSL) 2010 position statement on climate change does not mention the incredible cosmogenic isotope record at all.
A group of geologists have drawn my attention to the 2010/2013 
In my recent post, 
Has the day of the smart computer controlled micro-grid arrived? They reduce dependency on power from large centralised utilities whilst at the same time empowering communities to become self sufficient in energy supplies. Blockchain computer code is the enabling technology that allows the vendor of surplus solar power to trade with a neighbour who wants to buy electricity.
With little fanfare last week, the Chinese designed HPR1000 (previously Hualong-1), pressurised water reactor, cleared the first of four stages in the General Design Assessment (GDA) administered by the UK Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR). China General Nuclear (CGN) proposes to build 2 reactors of this design at the Bradwell site in England, in partnership with French state-owned EDF that currently operates all UK commercial reactors.
On around June 28th the price of WTI and Brent once again began to diverge and the spread now stands at over $7. The WTI – Brent spread was a feature of the high oil price era and its reappearance could be a bullish signal for the oil price. While WTI is trading sideways the Brent chart is bullish having decisively broken through resistance at $55. North American production has recovered from July 2016 lows to stand at 19.91 Mbpd in August 2017. OPEC remains largely compliant with the agreed production cuts but this is significantly undone by production increases of 230,000 bpd in Nigeria and 360,000 bpd in Libya (total +590,000 bpd since the October 2016 datum), who were not party to the OPEC deal. The recovery in North Sea Oil production that began in October 2012 is now faltering and this observation alone may explain why the Brent oil price is staging a recovery.
A couple of weeks ago (I think September 11) I was watching BBC news mid morning, following the Hurricane Irma story and I happened to catch an editorial on the recent CfD auction where the lowest bids for offshore wind came in at £57.50 / MWh, well below the bids in the first round where £120 per MWh were the norm. The young female presenter interviewed the CEO of Renewables UK and a number of untrue statements were made. I put this down to ignorance on the part of the BBC and duplicity on the part of Emma Pinchbeck from Renewable UK. Every time I see a report like this I want to send a complaint to the BBC – but I just don’t have the time. And there are encouraging signs that the BBC are trying to get their act together. In the 
Since 1851 there has been on average 5.4±2.5 (1SD) Atlantic Hurricanes per annum. There is a clear trend of rising frequency from 4.4 Hurricanes per annum in 1851 to 6.3 per annum today, that is a rate of increase of 1.2 hurricanes per annum per century.
