Yes, I am standing somewhere windswept
and talking about infrastructure. I have a style! Also, that whooshing sound
you can hear? That's the other turbine
that you can't see in this camera shot. Anyway. Power grids!
They have to balance supply and demand. I've talked about that a few times
in the past here. But as a quick catch up, if there's not enough power
being generated, things break. But if there's too much power
being generated, things also break. And arguably in a worse way. There isn't a battery in the world big enough to deal with the daily peaks
and troughs of national demand. So power grid engineers have to make sure
that the power being generated is always close to the power
that's being used. There are a lot of possible technologies
to help with that balance. And I've talked about some of those
before here, too. Pumped storage that uses a lake
as a giant battery, or even the big lithium-ion setup in Australia
that's only caught on fire once so far. But all of those technologies
assume that supply and demand will balance each other out over time,
usually over a few hours. What happens if you always
have too much power? Welcome to the Orkney Islands, in the far
north east of Scotland. About 22,000 people live here, on around
1,000 windswept square kilometers. And they have so much renewable energy
from wind and waves and tides that it's genuinely a problem. Solution number one is:
turn off the turbines. - 2013, we were producing
up to 130% of our electrical needs. So there can be quite a lot of curtailment
on several turbines. There's active network management. The wind turbine will be shut down
because the network can't handle the load. There's been a moratorium
on any new grid connections. There is potential for some
microgeneration, but nothing of any scale. So when you're in a place like Orkney,
where you have some of the best generation potential,
it's a complete waste. - Turning off the turbines
isn't a good solution. It's wasteful. Depending on the time of day and year, these islands need between
7 and 46 megawatts. It's almost always windy here, so
a couple of big commercial wind farms like this can produce all the power
that folks here need. But they've also got 500
domestic turbines, privately owned. 1 in 12 households
generate their own power. Because why wouldn't you? Once you pay the installation costs, you'll probably turn a profit,
year after year after year. One of the things I struggled with,
writing this script. is that there is so much
going on up here. There's an electric hybrid plane
being tested at the airport. There are tidal power experiments,
wind power experiments. Every type of renewable energy,
almost, is being tested here. ...there's not much solar. And there's a backup:
for the very rare days when the wind is calm,
there are interconnector cables that can pull up to 40 megawatts
from the Scottish mainland. But OK: they're generating
a massive surplus of power, and they're connected
to the British National Grid. So surely solution number two is:
use those interconnectors? They can just sell the extra power
back to the mainland. Well, those 40 megawatts
that the interconnectors can handle? That's not actually all that much. - The interconnector cables
we've got are small. We reckon there's 2,000 megawatts of tidal
and wave generation around here. We reckon there's 17,000
megawatts of offshore wind within a couple of hundred
kilometers of here. The interconnector was built for an old day when you used to burn coal
and send us electricity. That's gone. We don't do that anymore. We now need to be in a position where
we've got a better way to get the power from these islands away. - If the new interconnector is built,
it carry enough power for all the turbines that Orkney could
reasonably put up in the next few years. They could power most of
the highlands of Scotland. But building that new interconnector
will cost a quarter of a billion pounds. National government requires
that the islands approve plans for enough new turbines to make sure it's
going to be used, before it's approved. That's all still
in the balance politically. So solution number three is that the
islands could start using more electricity. There's already a larger
share of electric cars here than anywhere else in Scotland.
But most vehicles still use petrol or diesel. That could change.
There's still a lot of oil heating. The ferries, vital for getting around,
still burn fossil fuels. The transition is a slow process. No one's going to scrap a
perfectly good car or heater - or ferry - unless they have to. But there are plans. And Orkney's also had a hydrogen fuel system for years,
to help soak up a bit of the excess power. We're producing hydrogen from,
effectively, spare electricity. That's why we started. We're taking electricity,
putting it into fresh water, and it splits the water
into hydrogen and oxygen. We're getting rid of the oxygen
and we're just capturing the hydrogen. We're compressing it,
and then we're using it in this fuel cell. We have ferries that operate
within the islands. One of those ferries is able to be powered by this fuel cell
when it ties up alongside at night. And it saves it running its own engines, or it saves it drawing
power from the grid. This is just the start of something. This equipment is experimental
and believe me, it's not efficient. This is not the best way of doing it. But we're finding our way
into new territory. We try and unearth some of the challenges so that when we
scale this equipment up, then those faults have been polished out. - These islands are years
ahead of the rest of the world. This is the test bed. This is a small version of the changes
that the whole planet is going to make. The transition to renewables is happening faster here in Orkney than,
I think, anywhere else in the world. But as you travel around these islands,
it just seems normal. Nothing's visibly changed, but the lessons that they're learning here will hopefully
pave the way for the rest of the world.
Just turn the windturbines into fans and blow towards scotland so they can harvest the wind with their turbines.
Someone with a portable bitcoin mine is going to be contacting them very soon.
We could do carbon sinks there.
Tfw you're literally moving to the Orkney Islands next week to do a masters degree in marine renewable energy! Good to know my life choices are Tom Scott approved!
If they had the interconnect to transfer the power, and the money to build all those wind turbines, we could power over half of the UK from wind alone.
Knew this was a Tom Scott video before even hitting play.. he has a way with video titles..
How'd I know this was Tom Scott just from the title. His videos might be my favorite on YouTube
Neat
"So we take all this surplus power and use it to make hydrogen, and then the hydrogen we use to power a fuel cell and the fuel cell we use for shore power for the boat, you know so it doesn't have to draw from the grid... the one with all the surplus power".
Not giving them shit, I get they're just proof of concepting the generator, but still funny.