Energy Storage Sparks New Network In Scotland

Industry body Scottish Renewables has launched a new Storage Network this week, alongside a white paper titled 'Energy Storage: The Basics', to bring together those with an interest in the rapidly-growing sector.

Joss Blamire, Senior Policy Manager at Scottish Renewables, said: "It is of vital importance to our energy system that we have a strong energy storage sector to complement Scotland's growing renewable electricity and heat sectors and to increase our energy security.
 
"Being able to store when it is generated and deploy it is needed would help to maximise our use of renewables generation, cut carbon emissions further, and revolutionise the way we use energy.
 
"The global market for large-scale energy storage has been estimated at almost £20 billion ($30bn) by 2022. Scotland has already taken a lead in the development of technologies such as grid-scale batteries, which are currently being used on some of our remote islands, and pumped storage hydro, but there is far more we could do. This new network aims to keep that progress going."

Some of the technologies covered in the white paper, published yesterday (September 24), include:

• Hydrogen fuel cells "“ building on knowledge from Aberdeen's hydrogen bus fleet and two Scottish universities who are at the forefront of research into this area;
• Large-scale heat storage "“ for which potential has already been identified in disused mines in the central belt and abandoned railway tunnels in Glasgow, and;
• Supercapacitors "“ which range in size from miniscule to extremely large, and can be used in fractions of a second to balance electricity grids.