We learn about
conservation of energy in school. How you can take potential energy, like the energy in the
chemicals in this battery, and you can then just convert
it to electrical energy. And then convert that to
whatever you can find a use for. A battery is just a store
of potential energy. And that potential energy
could be chemical, or it could be gravitational. This lake in this rainy bit of Wales
is part of the largest battery in Britain. And it's rechargeable. Welcome to Dinorwig Power Station, otherwise known as Electric Mountain. - What we have is a large reservoir
at the top of the mountain, a large reservoir at the bottom, and between the two, a power station, which converts that
potential energy into electricity. The power station itself is located
inside that mountain in deep caverns. We release that potential energy
through the station. It drives a turbine that spins round at
synchronous speeds, connected to the grid. It drives a generator,
converting that into electricity. We then export that
onto the National Grid. And then at nighttime, we just
reverse the whole process. The turbine turns into a pump.
The generator becomes a motor. And we push that water back up the hill
into the reservoir at Marchlyn Mawr, at the top of the mountain. The operating principle
here is that the generation that the station is able
to do during the daytime helps the nation meet those peaks
of electricity demand. And overnight, it's able to pump the
water back when prices are lower. In electrical terms, we have
around nine gigawatt-hours of storage at the top of the mountain. And in fact over the course of a day, the water passing through the
station is broadly equivalent to the total household
consumption of water in the UK. At full load, we can
be meeting the demand of around about two million homes. - This sounds like a really simple idea, but when there's this
much energy involved, the design challenges are ridiculous. If you've ever lived in a house
where you turn off a water tap and the the pipes go clunk, then you know about water hammer. Water isn't compressible, so closing a tap means that all the water
that is under pressure and rushing down the pipe
suddenly has nowhere to go. So if the pipes in your house
aren't secured properly, the crash and rebound of all that water can make the plumbing move and make noise. If that can happen with
just a tap in a house, imagine what could happen
when one of the valves here closes. At full capacity, there
is somewhere around a swimming pool every second rushing through the turbines down there. When that valve closes, all
that water heading down here suddenly has nowhere to go. The pressure would do
enormous amounts of damage. It would break everything apart,
if it wasn't for one extra bit of plumbing. A shaft hundreds of metres deep
that acts as a pressure release. We can't see anything, on the
surface or from down here, sadly, it all happens
deep within the mountain. But every time those valves move, [valve clanking] that surge pipe is what
stops the whole system from tearing itself apart. This station is not some
quirky old curiosity. This is serious engineering that keeps the lights
on around the country. - Dinorwig Power Station
is one of the largest power stations of its type in the world, and it's also one of the
fastest-acting power stations. So as well as being able to take advantage of the peaks and troughs
in the electricity market, it was essentially built, primarily, with the intent to provide very fast response onto the system in order to help the National Grid balance
supply and demand instantaneously on a second-by-second basis. So it has the capacity to be able to go
from zero up to its full capacity, maybe 2,000 megawatts,
within 10 to 30 seconds. When people talk about pumped storage, they tend to associate
it a lot with TV pickups, and National Grid, in analysing that risk, study the TV schedules and plan ahead
and put Dinorwig on standby, if you like, to be able to meet those pickups. Going back to the 80s and the 90s, everyone would be sitting
around the same TV channels with a limited choice, then. All the ingredients you need for a sort-of
collective putting-on of the kettle and opening of the fridge.
Pickups could be pretty significant. But since then, people are streaming
on YouTube, on Netflix, all the different plethora of channels
that we have, so that has changed that sort of coincidence
of viewing on one channel. The current environment that we're in, we have significant amount of renewable
technology on the system, which provides a level of unpredictability day to day. And actually, the
importance of storage now is that we can use it to help develop
the amount of renewables we have and allow us to fill in those gaps when the wind's not blowing
and the sun is not shining. So having storage is such an important
component of the modern grid system. - Thank you very much
to all the team at Engie who made this visit possible. Pull down the description
for more about them, and more about Electric Mountain. A battery is just... a store!...
of potential energy.
I don't know why but the thought of British people simultaneously switching on the kettle after coronation street and almost draining the power supply of the country fills me with immense pride.
The Welsh (I think) on the signs throughout the video is cool
Turlough hill. Ireland’s version of this exact same electricity generation process. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turlough_Hill
If anyone finds themselves in Llanberis on a rainy day (which is highly likely if you've ever been to Llanberis), I'd thoroughly recommend a visit to Electric mountain. It's like a Bond villain's lair!
Wouldn't pumping the water up take as much energy as they gained going down?
One of my FAVORITE all time Youtube videos is one of these "overflow" chambers where water is diverted when an emergency shutoff occurs. As someone obsessed with water, water flow, and the physics of it all - please check this one out if you found the video post interesting at all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJVBlhgt9j8
I couldnt understand how the valvules were able to withstand the pressure. can anybody ELI5?
all of the largest "batteries" in the world are lakes. there's a giant one in the usa in virginia. iceland gets free energy from underground. not everyone is that lucky and they have to turn their lakes into "batteries"
I misread this and was wondering who Brian was and how anyone could own a battery that was a lake.