Author: Eldad Avital (Queen Mary University of London) - With the threat of global warming, many countries are investigating ways to decarbonize their electricity grids. This has led to increased interest in the application of technologies to store energy generated by wind turbines for use when the wind speeds are low. In this study we use time-series data from the Great Britain (GB) National Grid for 2024 to investigate the feasibility of this approach, with emphasis on identifying the barriers to implementation. Analysis revealed that at no point in time did the combined output from the wind and nuclear generation components exceed the demand on the grid, indicating that there was no excess capacity in the GB wind turbine fleet that could be utilized for energy storage. Analysis of UK’s wind load-shifting potential revealed the theoretical upper-limit for energy storage to be approximately 57.3 TWh (assuming 100% efficiency). However, this would result in the effective peak output of the wind turbine fleet being reduced by 58.2%, likely making such a strategy unfeasible. This however, does not preclude wind energy storage at a local level. In remote locations where electricity demand is low at night, it might be feasible to storge excess wind energy using electrical batteries, pumped storage or gravity batteries. Such example is given for a location in Wales.
