Media Isle of Man had the honour of being part of Energy Sustainability Centre's recent 'Roundtable' session, organised by MMC and hosted by Capital International Group.
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00:00Just in terms of other power, renewable power sources, and just so it's not the windmill show as it were,
00:09so we've talked about the cable, Ralph, and obviously we've got potential of wind farms on and offshore,
00:15so if neither of those works, and just throwing it out there, what other renewable energies could the Isle of Man explore?
00:23You'd have to work a lot harder then, wouldn't you, because wind is the cheapest.
00:28You've obviously got solar, that is relatively cheap, but wind is the best opportunity for the Isle of Man.
00:35Other things are more in the research area, tidal etc, will it ever come?
00:41It probably will in some shape or another, but at the moment that's 20 years away.
00:46And why is that?
00:48It's not as effective. Water tends to move around, it doesn't want to drive that turbine, it just moves around it,
00:54so it's all quite complicated, whereas the wind does tend to go through the blades and then turns the blades.
01:01But solar wouldn't be a way forward for the Isle of Man?
01:08It would, it's certainly going to contribute, absolutely.
01:10So you wouldn't want to just have wind, I don't even think Olsen would say that, you'd want to have a balance.
01:15But once you get past that, then it becomes very expensive.
01:20So then you start losing the argument then against the cost of fossil fuels, whereas wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels.
01:29So that's the great thing, so you're going to end up with not only secure on the Isle of Man,
01:33but it's actually going to be back to the days where your electricity was 16 pence per kilowatt hour.
01:39So the government's strategy having wind, solar and cable currently, that's what they went through a presentation last week,
01:48and we've got our solar strategy, we've got our wind strategy, we've got our backup generator strategy, we've got our cable strategy,
01:56so have they got it right or have they got it wrong?
02:00Well the cable's already in, the 60 megawatt cable's already in, so you're not going to take that out,
02:04but that has now been in for about 20 years I think, so it's come to the end of its life.
02:09So there will want to be another cable, but certainly if it was my decision, I'd be looking to put a cable into the offshore wind,
02:15rather than worrying about a brand new cable to the UK, let Olstead do that second leg.
02:21I think the other element though is the energy storage, because you picked up on it as well,
02:25I mean that's something that we are doing a huge amount of, future projects which integrate energy storage with offshore wind.
02:33We've got an offshore wind farm now that we're bringing forward that doesn't have some form of project we're developing to co-locate something.
02:40The reason that it's less visible is because it comes at a later time,
02:44because obviously the most important thing with the lead-in times, the environmental impact assessments that you do for offshore wind,
02:49those things come as an add-on, but we're looking at projects in battery storage, in green hydrogen, in compressed air storage.
02:57There's so much technological change there, that actually I think come the 2030s, a relevant point in time,
03:04there's a huge opportunity for the Isle of Man there, because the demand is at that kind of level,
03:09that a really efficient storage solution, somewhere else deployed first, tested, worked out,
03:14perhaps economies of scale bring the cost down, could be a really good solution,
03:19particularly if you're trying to balance your wind, your solar during the day, and your interconnectors subject to price.
03:26We all have variables that we have to contend with, so having a localised, from an energy security point of view,
03:31I think that's a massive opportunity that will come, just not yet.
03:35I'm seeing the opportunity now to dip into battery storage, and I'm going to be doing that this year.
03:42I'll be looking to put battery storage in, just to harness what I'm losing from the solar,
03:50because there are times when I give back to the grid, I'm fuelling my building, and then the rest of it's going to waste,
03:56so I do see an opportunity. The payback's quite long, but it's still an opportunity,
04:02and it means that even in the evenings, when the building's trickling, I can trickle it from battery storage,
04:09rather than from the grid, that'll all help.
04:15We've been looking at wind, we've been looking at battery, and we think there's enough in battery now to go,
04:22but we're really interested in looking at what else is out there in that long-term storage,
04:27rather than what we'll end up with is probably seven days' worth of storage capabilities,
04:33versus wanting to be able to store stuff from the summer into the winter, would be where ideally you want to be.
04:41And that's, again, what needs to move on. The general direction at the moment, looking at storage, say in the UK,
04:48market is about dispatchable power. It's about being able to press the button and have it on,
04:52because that's what the national grid desires.
04:55But again, our projects like Compressed Air are more around that long-duration storage.
05:00How do you find the solution technologically to keep it for a long time, and then use it to fill in the gaps with availability?
05:08It's like everything else, and it's a really exciting sector to work in.
05:11You can always tell that when you speak to me, but there's no two days to save.
05:15The advances in technology we've seen just in wind, the reason it's the lowest cost is because of the scalability,
05:22the supply chain, everything being in the right order has brought that cost curve right down from where it was 20 years ago,
05:29and that's what could happen to these other technologies.
05:31That will happen with storage as well, whether it's sand or salt or bricks.
05:35Isn't it really important to have choice as well?
05:37One size doesn't fit all, and we don't have any solar generation in this building.
05:46We don't have enough roof collateral to make a difference.
05:50Other businesses will have more space, have more opportunity.
05:53We do a lot of work in South Africa.
05:57What I found amazing in South Africa, where the energy sector has collapsed pretty much,
06:05solar has become the standard private electricity generation,
06:11and inverters and batteries and so on are now installed in most homes where individuals can afford to put the installation in,
06:24simply because the alternative is nothing at all.
06:27It's fascinating, and it's incredible to see how that has changed in five years.
06:33We don't have that here because we don't have the energy.
06:35We have the energy security, so we don't need to.
06:38If you start taking that away, you'd find every house in the Isle of Man have a solar panel and a battery on it
06:43as quickly as it can be installed.
06:46I think that choice is really important, actually, because one size doesn't fit all,
06:51and everybody needs to be able to select what works for them.