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rwmj 6 days ago

Is it 300 or 600 MWh? Or is the storage 600, but it can deliver 300MW/h?

Edit: The company press release is much clearer: https://stateraenergy.co.uk/news/thurrock-energisation The storage is 300 MWh, but it can deliver a peak of 600 MW/h (presumably for half an hour).

nicoburns 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

The orginal article is pretty clear:

The 300MW Thurrock Storage project... with a total capacity of 600MWh

riedel 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The OP says it the other way around though. Power is 300MW and capacity 600MWh=2h*300MW. There is no mentioning of 300MWh in the OP.

iaebsdfsh 6 days ago | parent [-]

Storage is measured in MWh, power in Watts, I think the original press release is wrong and it can output 300W for at most two hours. The following link confirms that: https://www.ess-news.com/2025/08/18/statera-energy-powers-up...

pietjepuk88 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

> The 300MW Thurrock Storage project, developed by Statera Energy, is now energised and delivering electricity flexibly to the network across London and the south east.

> With a total capacity of 600MWh, Thurrock Storage is capable of powering up to 680,000 homes, and can help to balance supply and demand by soaking up surplus clean electricity and discharging it instantaneously when the grid needs it.

Unless they updated the original post, that all sounds correct to me. It's a 2-hour battery, rather common in the industry.

EDIT: Ah, you mean the https://stateraenergy.co.uk/news/thurrock-energisation is wrong, with the fantastically outrageous statement of "delivering its full output of up to 600MWh within seconds."

philipwhiuk 6 days ago | parent [-]

> "delivering its full output of up to 600MWh within seconds."

Ramp-up time for grid management is important but the value is all wrong.

hdgvhicv 6 days ago | parent [-]

The units are wrong. I don’t understand why so many people struggle with the difference beteeen MWh and MW, including people on HN.

Tostino 6 days ago | parent [-]

I've even seen this with people who say they are interested in and following this tech. I don't get it. The same mistake just happens over and over.

Journalists are some of the worst offenders.

tialaramex 6 days ago | parent [-]

Yup, this happens for any technology with journalists. A noob journo will be absolutely clear that it's crucial they interviewed Jim Smith and not Jane Smith even if it so happens that gender was not at all important to the story, like maybe Smith witnessed a massive lightning bolt destroying the bandstand.

But they will muddle bits and bytes, nanograms and milligrams, volts and amps and they barely even seem to notice that they did it.

Symbiote 6 days ago | parent [-]

Sometimes they insist on being incorrect.

The Guardian refuses to write the degree symbol for temperatures, for example, and have even put this error into their style guide.

https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-style-guide-c

tialaramex 6 days ago | parent [-]

I don't want a degree symbol on my temperatures, but that's because I want them in Kelvin so they shouldn't have one.

300K is too hot and I begin sweating. The Grauniad's House Style is the least of its problems.

nickdothutton 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

As an aside, this is exactly the kind of nonsense you get when marketing or PR firms have control over final wording. Once had someone change "uninterruptible power supply" to "non-interruptible" and then finally "interruptible" and that is how it went out in the final press release. There was some harsh language that day.

OJFord 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

I could forgive un to non-, but what the hell was the logic in just removing non-? That it was like (it isn't) [in]flammable just because the 'in' isn't negating 'terruptible'?

Actually, even that doesn't make sense, you can't remove non- from non-inflammable either, that would only work if it was the 'in' removed.

nickdothutton 5 days ago | parent [-]

This is a great question and was pretty much the last straw for me. I explained in plain english what the purpose of the UPS and battery room was, to help the PR understand why we called the thing "uninterruptible". Somehow in the final edit she confused this with "well, if the grid power can be interrupted and your servers remain on... then this means he must have meant 'interruptible' power supply.

rwmj 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I hope this wasn't for a UPS company!

nickdothutton 6 days ago | parent [-]

We were launching a new data centre in the UK (early 90s) and wanted to crow about how much power, battery, diesel, etc we had. I don't think the PR firm had any idea what most of the words meant.

lostlogin 6 days ago | parent [-]

You needed a relations management firm between you and the PR firm, turtles all the way down.

ragebol 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> This landmark 300MW battery storage site is capable of powering up to 680,000 homes with instantaneous power over two hours

Power is 300MW (300000000 Joules/second), which it can deliver for 2 hours, so capacity (energy contained in the device) is 600 MWh (or 2160000000000 Joules)