SRC-781

Large-scale electricity storage, issued September 2023

Published claims resting on this source

• CLM-1419 The Royal Society worked out that a British power system running only on wind and sun, with stored hydrogen to cover calm and dark spells, could supply electricity in 2050 at an average of 52 to 92 pounds per megawatt-hour in 2021 money. Most of that cost is the wind and solar power itself.
• CLM-1420 In the Royal Society's model, only about 15 per cent of Britain's electricity in 2050 comes out of storage, so the price of storage moves the average cost little. Each unit that does come out of storage costs many times more than wind or solar power used straight away.
• CLM-1469 In the Royal Society's model of a British power system run on wind and sun in 2050, electricity fed into the grid costs about 1.7 to 2 times what the wind and solar power itself costs. At the cheap end, the electricity costs about 1.7 times what the wind and solar power itself costs. At the expensive end it costs about twice as much.
• CLM-1488 A Royal Society report on storing electricity in Britain, drawing on the Met Office, says a spell of very low winter wind lasting up to a week comes every few years, and a calm summer spell of up to four weeks once every ten years. But in its model of a 2050 grid run on wind and sun, the biggest drain on the store came in the weather of 2009 to 2011, a run of low-wind years. The report warns that studies of single years, or of only the worst spells, can badly underestimate how much storage is needed.

Cite this