Powering Scotland entirely from renewables is an impossible dream

Thank goodness we still have conventional gas and nuclear, says Dr Andrew Mccormick

Although all electricity generation in Scotland could be entirely from renewables it would not be a viable supply unless connected to the National Grid.

Reliance on wind capacity for continuous surety of supply is absurd. Trying to re-energise a collapsed grid system from wind power would be like trying to fill a colander using a tea cup: a truly catastrophic situation.

Supply failing to meet demand – an inevitable occurrence if we only had intermittent sources such as wind – would be like having a ‘short’ on a grand scale. We need an easily accessible reserve store of energy. However, a single day’s reserve would be the equivalent of about 200 million car batteries, and we cannot store sufficient electricity. For the near future, only a system of hydro storage and regeneration could fit the bill of sufficiency and speed of response.

For this, water is pumped to a high level storage dam and allowed to fall back down the pipes to drive the special reversible pumps which are now generators. One day’s reserve would mean pumping the top two metres of Loch Lomond to a huge dam 250m above a turbine station with four times the generating capacity of the whole of our existing conventional hydro schemes (over 100 stations).

Is that really achievable, acceptable and affordable? We have two existing pumped hydro storage installations totalling just under four hours of reserve delivered at