Letter: Letter

From Lawrie O'Connor

Marples is incorrect when he says, “Renewable energy . . . is impossible to
store in the enormous quantities necessary.” Innogy, an offshoot of National
Power, has taken regenerative fuel-cell technology out of the lab and scaled it
up to commercial proportions. Its Regenesys system, due to go on-stream in May
this year at Little Barford in Cambridgeshire can store 120 megawatt-hours of
electrical energy and release it at up to 15 megawatts—a sufficiently
large system to satisfy most engineers. Sufficiently large, in fact, to interest
the Tennessee Valley Authority, which has ordered a similar unit.

I should say here that I have no connection with National Power or Innogy. My
interest is simply as a local authority energy officer.

For the technically minded, the unit uses sodium polysulphide/ sodium bromide
electrolytes. These, I am told, are derived from sea water and are effectively
inexhaustible. Further details on www.regenesys.com.

As for protecting areas of natural beauty, I would be quite happy to see
Britain covered with multi-megawatt wind turbines and every town have its own
gasometer-sized electricity storage unit if that’s what it will take to get us
out of the carbon dioxide/nuclear deadlock.

Ossett, West Yorkshire