News Articles by Mark Howitt

If you see me, weep Water levels in many great rivers are dropping to critical levels and below, due to high temperatures and drought: these “hunger stones” in the Elbe (and similar ones elsewhere in central Europe) were carved in a drought four centuries ago (AD...

Introduction There is much discussion on how to store and transport hydrogen, with diverse methods being proposed. I will focus on the storage and transportation at massive (i.e. infrastructure) scale. Hydrogen Transportation At massive scale, there are two principal...

Introduction The current regulatory and contractual framework is designed around a 20th century industry (baseload coal and nuclear, dispatchable gas, all other bits are add-ons). It is totally unfit for the 21st century as it: Is dominated by non-energy costs, which...

Storelectric's Mark Howitt highlights enormous opportunity for compressed air energy storage

National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios 2022 (NG’s FES 2022) is a small step forward on their 2021 document. It contains broader, for example considering aviation, shipping and railways (albeit only in terms of emissions, not energy consumption). We agree that “Whole...

National grid has taken a good step forward by producing a Pathway to 2030 Holistic Network Design. It is really good that it considers the entire network's needs, though will need to be updated with, for example, the new Celtic Sea areas, increased offshore wind...

Hydrogen is increasingly being touted as the ideal technology for both electricity storage and balancing renewable generation on the grid. The reality is more nuanced than that: hydrogen and CAES complement each other, each with distinct roles in which they are the...

The challenge of grid stability currently costs the grid about a half of energy balancing, but growing faster; within a very few years it is expected to overtake the balancing costs. In 2020 (and coincident with the rocketing non-energy costs of operating the system),...

Most people discuss electricity storage as though the challenge were just energy: balancing renewables, providing enough energy when they’re not generating as much as is needed at any given time. In terms of operational cost, that’s just a significant minority part of...

Carbon Capture, Use and Storage (CCUS) and CCS The strategy for continuing to use gas-fired power stations to balance grids, and for continuing to produce most hydrogen using Steam Methane Reformation (SMR) of methane, all depends on Carbon Capture, (Use and) Storage,...

Mark’s Blog Personal blog of Mark Howitt, founding director and CTO of Storelectric Ltd and recognised international expert in the energy transitionElectric versus Fuel Cell Vehicles Electric Vehicles (EVs) Batteries are the major technology being proposed for the...

Introduction There are many current issues facing the energy system which are challenging enough without confusing political challenges with regulatory ones. Too many political challenges are being given to regulators to sort out, which is grossly complicating matters...

Introduction It has been widely reported that grid balancing costs in the UK have doubled between September and November, which is concerning both Ofgem and National Grid. The latter have instigated a review, which the Ofgem awaits before deciding on any actions....

This report analyses the emissions benefits (avoided emissions) of Storelectric’s Green CAES and Hydrogen CAES plants. For Hydrogen CAES, a methane-fired version is considered; if hydrogen-fired, then the figures for Green CAES apply approximately. For ease of...

Hydrogen’s Missing Links  Hydrogen is an essential part of the Net Zero economy, so we support funding for developing its technologies. However it is not a panacea for everything; in particular its scope does not include balancing renewable generation or the...

Summary of Findings The National Grid Future Energy Scenarios 2021 (NG’s FES 2021) is a small step forward on their 2020 document. It contains broader, for example considering aviation, shipping and railways (albeit only in terms of emissions, not energy consumption)....

The Smart Systems and Flexibility Plan is the UK government's and Ofgem's proposal to achieve Net Zero emissions in the energy system. Most of the other current BEIS consultations are detailed looks into elements of this plan. Our response is long and detailed,...

This is Storelectric’s abridged response to the call for evidence on facilitating the deployment of large-scale and long-duration electricity storage. This call seeks to identify the blockers to deploying large-scale long-duration electricity storage, and the best...

Excessive Costs of the Current System National Grid’s (NG’s) Network Options Analysis 2021 proposed ~£16bn grid reinforcement to accommodate ~17GW new offshore wind by 2025, almost £1bn/GW. This ignored that NG would also have to source balancing and stability...

Offshore Energy Networks The subject here is how to regulate OFTOs (cables owned by Offshore Transmission Owners) so that (for example) they can be linked together into offshore grids and/or interconnectors, or how other farms/plants can be connected to existing...

Throughout the energy transition, technology after technology has been lauded as "the big thing" of the energy transition, "the solution" to the challenges involved – in effect, a magic wand. The energy transition cannot be achieved by an over-emphasis on some...

One of the biggest challenges facing those who wish to invest in, or otherwise work with, energy storage is how to compare the costs and performance of different technologies. Many (e.g. batteries) carefully select their data points to flatter both their capabilities...

Current Situation Currently the energy transition is incentivised by an uncoordinated mish-mash of levies, charges, bans and regulations. Examples include: The European Trading System, topped up by the in some countries by a levy, of the order of €30-40/tonne of...

Batteries – Expensive and Inadequate Solutions Enabling an Affordable, Reliable and Resilient Energy Transition Grid connected batteries are being used for many grid services that would be much better and more cheaply delivered by large-scale long-duration storage,...

Three Perfect Storms?  Three severe winter storms swept across America in the period February 10-20, 2021. While causing many problems across the country, in Texas they caused widespread blackouts, affecting almost the entire population in rolling brown-outs and total...

Current Calculations Currently each country and grid calculates its need for storage in very complicated manner, by creating a model with various scenarios, projecting different generation mixes all based on huge assumptions as to what will be rolled out in future....

The UK government and grid are planning £16bn grid upgrades as part of wider developments to accommodate an additional 17GW of new offshore wind (to 35GW intermittent renewable generation) by the mid 2030s. This is to accommodate the peaks of intermittent generation...

Storelectric has identified a number of critical challenges for the energy transition, and their solutions. These are discussed below. Intermittency Most renewables generate electricity intermittency, i.e. when it wants to. This applies to wind, solar, tidal and wave...

Interconnectors in Europe The United Kingdom no longer has enough domestically generated electricity for its own peak needs, and relies on imports through interconnectors. As the grid decarbonises, power stations are closing, increasing the country's reliance on...

The Challenge Net Zero grids have very low levels of dispatchable (i.e. on-demand) generation – largely hydro-electric, nuclear, gas-fired power stations with CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage), and biomass power stations. The bulk of their energy derives from...

Since privatisation, the only major capital investment into infrastructure-scale plant and equipment that was not planned before privatisation has been undertaken under special financial instruments (ROCs, OFTOs, CATOs, CfDs, CM etc.) that guarantee 15+ year...

Vehicle to Grid and Shared Mobility Vehicle to Grid (V2G) and Shared Mobility are two of the big buzz-phrases rolled out in the transportation sector, as magical solutions to energy storage needs of the grid (V2G) and to all the woes of transport-related climate...

I was recently asked: do renewable power plants impact the environment? Quite obviously the questioner was seeking to justify pursuing the fossil-fuelled status quo by nit-picking faults in the case for clean energy. This led me to reflect on some environmental...

Alternatives to CAES for provision of arbitrage, balancing, ancillary, stability and other services come from power stations, pumped hydro-electric stations, batteries, Demand Side Response (DSR), interconnectors and ignorance. Power Stations Power stations are being...

Hydrogen will play a significant role in zero-carbon economies in the future. It can be stored at large scale, especially in salt caverns which can be formed in much of the world; It can be stored at ultra-high pressure – vehicle makers are considering up to 700bar:...

Storelectric’s CAES plants are usually designed as stand-alone plants with stand-alone profits based on buying electricity from the grid and selling it back to the grid. There are many up-side revenue streams available, such as buying and selling under PPAs (Private...

Grid-scale electricity storage using an innovative form of Compressed Air Energy Storage When discussing adiabatic CAES, such as that proposed by Storelectric, it is frequently confused with isothermal CAES such as that proposed by Lightsail, SustainX and General...

There have been a number of reports claiming that the German experience proves that what’s needed on the system is not baseload (described as “poison”) or storage, but lots of flexibility. A rational analysis of these articles finds numerous contradictions and errors....

The Energy Transition The energy transition to a zero-carbon economy is, quite correctly, seeing widespread roll-out of tens of GW of renewable generation. we're already at over 30GW and, because of load factors, to supply our 56GW peak demand will need over 200GW...

CAES or Batteries? Many people have suggested that batteries are a viable way forward for grid-scale electricity storage, and some have cast doubt on whether there is a role for Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES). However CAES, batteries and the other storage...

Conventional Energy There are two main disadvantages with conventional energy: pollution and concentration. Pollution is in many forms throughout the process. The worst and most enduring is emissions-related climate change, well proven and fully discussed. But...

This article considers the question: as renewables become adopted more, how will that change the utility companies’ business models? The answer is: it depends which utility companies: those involved in generation, transmission / distribution, or retail? And note that...

What would such a system look like? A de-carbonised energy system would be built up of many diverse elements selected to be the most suitable mix for each location. There is no single answer or “magic bullet”, no “winning technology” for powering the world, or even...

I was recently asked: do I truly care about climate change or not, and why? Yes, I care – enough to forego 4 years’ earnings (out of 6.5 years working at this job) and still be earning less than I would in another job, as well as working long hours. I do it because,...

100% renewable energy is a target for the energy systems by 2040, though if it can be achieved by 2030 (which I doubt), then so much the better. It’s important for energy to go to zero because it’s possible without additional costs in the overall system, if done...

Introduction This analysis is re-written in fundamental ways as compared with the 2017 analysis, because the Future Energy Scenarios have changed markedly, and largely for the better. Two of the scenarios are legally compliant to the Climate Change Act 2008, offering...

There are, by my analysis, 5 scales of storage. Rising in factors of 10 in both scale and duration, they are domestic, local, area, regional and national. Just as the road network (and many other things) needs all scales to operate, so does the energy storage...

Everyone should seek to transform their electricity system to a renewable one, in every region of the world, but not unthinkingly - otherwise the consequent blackouts and price increases would blacken the name of renewable energy. There are a number of steps,...