Construction of the first grid-scale electricity storage facility to be built in Britain for more than 30 years could begin as early as 2018 following today’s granting of planning permission for the scheme.
Developer Snowdonia Pumped Hydro (SPH) has been given the go-ahead by the UK government to turn two abandoned slate quarries at Glyn Rhonwy near Llanberis in North Wales into water reservoirs that will store some 700 MWhs of electricity—sufficient to supply 200,000 homes with electricity for seven hours a day over a projected operational lifetime of 125 years or more.
The GBP 160m facility will use surplus electricity, for example from wind and solar sources, to pump water through an underground tunnel from the lower to the upper reservoir. When lack of wind or sunshine reduces renewable power output, or when fossil fuel generators fail to start, the water will flow back down the tunnel, spinning a turbine in an underground chamber to regenerate the...
