WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 1 00:00:01.240 --> 00:00:05.000 Yes, I am standing somewhere windswept and talking about infrastructure. 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:06.360 I have a style! 3 00:00:06.360 --> 00:00:08.560 Also, that whooshing sound you can hear? 4 00:00:08.560 --> 00:00:11.880 That's the other turbine that you can't see in this camera shot. 5 00:00:11.880 --> 00:00:15.280 Anyway. Power grids! They have to balance supply and demand. 6 00:00:15.280 --> 00:00:18.040 I've talked about that a few times in the past here. But as a quick catch up, 7 00:00:18.040 --> 00:00:21.080 if there's not enough power being generated, things break. 8 00:00:21.080 --> 00:00:24.600 But if there's too much power being generated, things also break. 9 00:00:24.600 --> 00:00:26.280 And arguably in a worse way. 10 00:00:26.280 --> 00:00:27.520 There isn't a battery in the world 11 00:00:27.520 --> 00:00:30.440 big enough to deal with the daily peaks and troughs of national demand. 12 00:00:30.440 --> 00:00:33.840 So power grid engineers have to make sure that the power being generated 13 00:00:33.840 --> 00:00:37.400 is always close to the power that's being used. 14 00:00:37.400 --> 00:00:40.440 There are a lot of possible technologies to help with that balance. 15 00:00:40.440 --> 00:00:42.760 And I've talked about some of those before here, too. 16 00:00:42.760 --> 00:00:45.960 Pumped storage that uses a lake as a giant battery, or even the big 17 00:00:45.960 --> 00:00:50.280 lithium-ion setup in Australia that's only caught on fire once so far. 18 00:00:50.280 --> 00:00:53.200 But all of those technologies assume that supply and demand 19 00:00:53.200 --> 00:00:56.760 will balance each other out over time, usually over a few hours. 20 00:00:56.760 --> 00:01:00.280 What happens if you always have too much power? 21 00:01:00.280 --> 00:01:03.600 Welcome to the Orkney Islands, in the far north east of Scotland. 22 00:01:03.600 --> 00:01:08.200 About 22,000 people live here, on around 1,000 windswept square kilometers. 23 00:01:08.200 --> 00:01:12.120 And they have so much renewable energy from wind and waves and tides 24 00:01:12.120 --> 00:01:14.120 that it's genuinely a problem. 25 00:01:14.120 --> 00:01:17.960 Solution number one is: turn off the turbines. 26 00:01:17.960 --> 00:01:24.040 - 2013, we were producing up to 130% of our electrical needs. 27 00:01:24.040 --> 00:01:27.360 So there can be quite a lot of curtailment on several turbines. 28 00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:29.400 There's active network management. 29 00:01:29.400 --> 00:01:33.600 The wind turbine will be shut down because the network can't handle the load. 30 00:01:33.600 --> 00:01:36.400 There's been a moratorium on any new grid connections. 31 00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:41.120 There is potential for some microgeneration, but nothing of any scale. 32 00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:45.600 So when you're in a place like Orkney, where you have some of the best 33 00:01:45.600 --> 00:01:48.440 generation potential, it's a complete waste. 34 00:01:48.440 --> 00:01:51.480 - Turning off the turbines isn't a good solution. It's wasteful. 35 00:01:51.480 --> 00:01:53.200 Depending on the time of day and year, 36 00:01:53.200 --> 00:01:56.160 these islands need between 7 and 46 megawatts. 37 00:01:56.160 --> 00:02:00.080 It's almost always windy here, so a couple of big commercial wind farms 38 00:02:00.080 --> 00:02:02.520 like this can produce all the power that folks here need. 39 00:02:02.520 --> 00:02:05.760 But they've also got 500 domestic turbines, privately owned. 40 00:02:05.760 --> 00:02:07.680 1 in 12 households generate their own power. 41 00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:08.880 Because why wouldn't you? 42 00:02:08.880 --> 00:02:10.200 Once you pay the installation costs, 43 00:02:10.200 --> 00:02:12.920 you'll probably turn a profit, year after year after year. 44 00:02:12.920 --> 00:02:15.760 One of the things I struggled with, writing this script. is 45 00:02:15.760 --> 00:02:17.840 that there is so much going on up here. 46 00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:21.160 There's an electric hybrid plane being tested at the airport. 47 00:02:21.160 --> 00:02:24.120 There are tidal power experiments, wave power experiments. 48 00:02:24.120 --> 00:02:27.880 Every type of renewable energy, almost, is being tested here. 49 00:02:27.880 --> 00:02:29.600 ...there's not much solar. 50 00:02:29.600 --> 00:02:31.640 And there's a backup: for the very rare days 51 00:02:31.640 --> 00:02:33.840 when the wind is calm, there are interconnector cables 52 00:02:33.840 --> 00:02:37.000 that can pull up to 40 megawatts from the Scottish mainland. 53 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:40.040 But OK: they're generating a massive surplus of power, 54 00:02:40.040 --> 00:02:42.600 and they're connected to the British National Grid. 55 00:02:42.600 --> 00:02:45.160 So surely solution number two is: use those interconnectors? 56 00:02:45.160 --> 00:02:48.360 They can just sell the extra power back to the mainland. 57 00:02:48.360 --> 00:02:51.480 Well, those 40 megawatts that the interconnectors can handle? 58 00:02:51.480 --> 00:02:53.800 That's not actually all that much. 59 00:02:53.800 --> 00:02:55.960 - The interconnector cables we've got are small. 60 00:02:55.960 --> 00:03:00.320 We reckon there's 2,000 megawatts of tidal and wave generation around here. 61 00:03:00.320 --> 00:03:03.840 We reckon there's 17,000 megawatts of offshore wind 62 00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:05.480 within a couple of hundred kilometers of here. 63 00:03:05.480 --> 00:03:06.280 The interconnector was built 64 00:03:06.280 --> 00:03:10.120 for an old day when you used to burn coal and send us electricity. 65 00:03:10.120 --> 00:03:11.880 That's gone. We don't do that anymore. 66 00:03:11.880 --> 00:03:15.640 We now need to be in a position where we've got a better way to get the power 67 00:03:15.640 --> 00:03:17.160 from these islands away. 68 00:03:17.160 --> 00:03:19.760 - If the new interconnector is built, it carry enough power 69 00:03:19.760 --> 00:03:23.640 for all the turbines that Orkney could reasonably put up in the next few years. 70 00:03:23.640 --> 00:03:25.800 They could power most of the highlands of Scotland. 71 00:03:25.800 --> 00:03:31.040 But building that new interconnector will cost a quarter of a billion pounds. 72 00:03:31.040 --> 00:03:33.960 National government requires that the islands approve plans for enough 73 00:03:33.960 --> 00:03:38.280 new turbines to make sure it's going to be used, before it's approved. 74 00:03:38.280 --> 00:03:40.280 That's all still in the balance politically. 75 00:03:40.280 --> 00:03:44.880 So solution number three is that the islands could start using more electricity. 76 00:03:44.880 --> 00:03:46.800 There's already a larger share of electric cars here 77 00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:50.280 than anywhere else in Scotland. But most vehicles still use petrol or diesel. 78 00:03:50.280 --> 00:03:52.480 That could change. There's still a lot of oil heating. 79 00:03:52.480 --> 00:03:56.440 The ferries, vital for getting around, still burn fossil fuels. 80 00:03:56.440 --> 00:03:57.720 The transition is a slow process. 81 00:03:57.720 --> 00:04:00.560 No one's going to scrap a perfectly good car or heater - or ferry - 82 00:04:00.560 --> 00:04:01.840 unless they have to. 83 00:04:01.840 --> 00:04:02.920 But there are plans. 84 00:04:02.920 --> 00:04:08.160 And Orkney's also had a hydrogen fuel system for years, to help soak up a bit of the excess power. 85 00:04:08.160 --> 00:04:11.560 We're producing hydrogen from, effectively, spare electricity. 86 00:04:11.560 --> 00:04:12.360 That's why we started. 87 00:04:12.360 --> 00:04:15.120 We're taking electricity, putting it into fresh water, 88 00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:18.240 and it splits the water into hydrogen and oxygen. 89 00:04:18.240 --> 00:04:21.560 We're getting rid of the oxygen and we're just capturing the hydrogen. 90 00:04:21.560 --> 00:04:24.920 We're compressing it, and then we're using it in this fuel cell. 91 00:04:24.920 --> 00:04:27.680 We have ferries that operate within the islands. One of those ferries 92 00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:31.600 is able to be powered by this fuel cell when it ties up alongside at night. 93 00:04:31.600 --> 00:04:33.480 And it saves it running its own engines, 94 00:04:33.480 --> 00:04:35.880 or it saves it drawing power from the grid. 95 00:04:35.880 --> 00:04:37.640 This is just the start of something. 96 00:04:37.640 --> 00:04:40.520 This equipment is experimental and believe me, it's not efficient. 97 00:04:40.520 --> 00:04:41.600 This is not the best way of doing it. 98 00:04:41.600 --> 00:04:44.240 But we're finding our way into new territory. 99 00:04:44.240 --> 00:04:45.480 We try and unearth 100 00:04:45.480 --> 00:04:50.640 some of the challenges so that when we scale this equipment up, then 101 00:04:50.640 --> 00:04:51.680 those faults have been polished out. 102 00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:54.240 - These islands are years ahead of the rest of the world. 103 00:04:54.240 --> 00:04:55.160 This is the test bed. 104 00:04:55.160 --> 00:04:58.800 This is a small version of the changes that the whole planet is going to make. 105 00:04:58.800 --> 00:04:59.720 The transition to renewables 106 00:04:59.720 --> 00:05:03.920 is happening faster here in Orkney than, I think, anywhere else in the world. 107 00:05:03.920 --> 00:05:06.680 But as you travel around these islands, it just seems normal. 108 00:05:06.680 --> 00:05:09.360 Nothing's visibly changed, but the lessons 109 00:05:09.360 --> 00:05:13.040 that they're learning here will hopefully pave the way for the rest of the world.