But appearances can be deceptive as this is the first step in saving billions of pounds off bills and millions of tonnes of carbon. "Battery storage sites like this are enabling more wind power to come on, but also it's shutting down the gas generators that are currently operating and as a result we save huge amounts of CO2." Hydrogen has a potential role in storage too: use electricity for the energy intensive process of breaking hydrogen out of water. Dan McGrail, from the trade body Renewable UK, says: "We're going through one of the biggest changes in our energy system of all time at the moment. To keep the lights on, some baseload of nuclear and reserve of gas power is likely to be needed for a few decades yet.
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