Bouvet Island water energy storage

Where is Bouvet Island?

Welcome to Bouvet Island, a small volcanic rock in the South Atlantic. The Sub-Antarctic territory is thousands of kilometres from civilisation, and its high cliffs and ice-cap mean very few people have ever put a foot on it. The weather doesn't help. Sticking out of the ocean the way it does means conditions can deteriorate very fast.

How do you store electricity in a lake?

The most common method of storing electricity, called water-powered energy storage, or simply pumped hydro, involves pumping water uphill from a lower lake to a lake about 100 meters uphill, storing it, and letting it run downhill to create power. But existing pumped hydro facilities are complex and expensive to build.

Is there an underwater gravity energy storage system?

Underwater gravity energy storage has received small attention, with no commercial-scale BEST systems developed to date . The work thus far is mostly theoretical and with small lab-scale experiments . Alami et al. , , tested an array of conical-shaped buoys that were allowed to rotate.

Why is Bouvet so important?

Bouvet is in a unique position by virtue of the fact that it sits out in the belt of westerlies that hurtle around the continent. And these winds are really important to the way the continent has been changing of late.

How does wind affect Bouvet?

Diatoms (tiny algae) that live at the surface of the ocean are whipped up in sea spray. The windier it is, the more concentrated their presence will be in the layers of snow settling on Bouvet. And it's not just a record of winds that Dr Thomas's team can extract.