By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Wind mills, solar farms and giant batteries. How to wreck the English countryside for no good reason!
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Mega projects designed to store renewable energy are drawing the ire of rural communities
The bucolic Buckinghamshire village of Granborough, while picturesque, is not much of a landmark. Mentioned in the Domesday Book, it briefly became a point of interest for James Bond fans when the abandoned rail station was referenced in the 2012 film Skyfall.
But the farmland around the village has been scoped out as the potential site for not one, but two giant battery installations and a solar farm.
The energy companies Statera and Statkraft have applied for permission to build two 500-megawatt sites near a new electricity substation, arguing it can support the move to a decarbonised electricity grid.
The plan has provoked heavy local opposition. “This might become an industrial area more than the farming land it’s been for the last thousand years,” says Jamie Ingham Clark, of the Claydons Solar Action Group.
“Battery storage sites should be on brownfield – they should not take away our ability to grow food.”
Campaigners say they are particularly concerned about fire risk from the batteries, after a major fire at a facility in Liverpool four years ago.
However, they are fighting an uphill battle.
Across the UK, giant battery installations are being proposed as investors seek to capitalise on Labour’s plan to decarbonise the grid with a wind and solar boom.
Supporters of grid batteries – mega projects featuring banks of bus-sized blocks able to power thousands of houses at once – say they are the missing piece in the puzzle, drawing excess power from wind and solar when the weather allows and releasing it when it is dark, calm and people need to heat and light their homes.
A total of 1,862 grid-scale battery storage projects have been built or proposed in Britain, according to RenewableUK, compared to just 215 that are currently operational.
If all these projects were built, this would provide 108.87 gigawatts (GW) of power – more than double the peak electricity demand of the whole country last winter. This would be up from just 4.6 GW currently, and zero eight years ago, suggesting an unprecedented battery boom is on the horizon.
“There’s been significant growth in the span of eight years, and that’s been made possible by a more decarbonised system. With that comes the requirement for battery storage,” says Yonna Vitanova, of RenewableUK.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/08/can-batteries-power-britain/
Yes, Yonna! The silly woman obviously does not realise she has got it backwards. Because useless wind and solar power is so intermittent, we must spend more billions on batteries, wrecking rural communities in the process.
As for this silly little reporter, James Titcomb, who claims that “If all these projects were built, this would provide 108.87 gigawatts (GW) of power – more than double the peak electricity demand of the whole country last winter”, does he not realise that this could only power the country for an hour or two? What on earth are we supposed to do when we have a week without wind?
Heaven help us all if this is the standard of the Telegraph’s journalism now.