Electric car rally promoting renewable energy hits former coal mine near Kirkconnel
This site played a key role in their theme and target.
From Saudi Arabia to Kirkconnel, from desert to former coal mine, Extreme E returns to Scotland for the second time to promote renewable energy development.
Eight teams and 16 drivers were at the former Glenmuckloch opencast coal mine site for the fourth season of Extreme E Hydro X Prix race.
Since the theme for the weekend’s event was energy and it was happening at a site that is soon to be transformed into a hydro pumped storage project, it provided an opportunity to showcase Extreme E’s focus on new technologies and environmental solutions.
This allowed the championship to use its platform to raise awareness of environmental challenges and the solutions through electric motorsport, enabling them to show ways how to gain a sustainable future.
Andy Welsh, Energy and Utility Manager for Extreme E explains why they’re at this particular site: “The spectrum of energy for the future. We’ve come here with our own system to operate on the site. It’s an example of the vast range of solutions for the future with the hydroelectric plans for the former opencast coal mine.
“We’re obviously a fully electric series. We’re making the move to hydrogen powered vehicles next year so hydrogen fuel cell with still a battery on board.
“Behind all that, the clean energy you need to fuel that vehicle and recharge the battery is obviously a key consideration and a bit like the scenario where you charge your electric vehicle with a diesel generator that’s obviously not an option so here, we’re bringing e-methanol to the event as a hydrogen carrier reforming it back into green hydrogen which is used in the fuel cell system.”
Welsh tells us how Extreme E plans to demonstrate their technology: “We’ve got a range of solutions on the sites here, from energy storage systems, fuel cells, forming systems, solar panels and what was the site of what was an old coal mine that’s being repurposed for a hydroelectric plant. It will make people understand that there is a lot of solutions for future energy needs.”
He adds what they’ve managed to achieve this weekend: “We’ve generated energy from green hydrogen at this event which is equivalent to the power required for approximately 1,000 homes in the UK. You could look at this in a different way: we could charge up one Extreme E car about 350 times.”
Reflecting over everything they set out to do this weekend, Welsh is feeling satisfied with everything they have accomplished: “Certainly on our side of things we’ve doubled our energy production from the last event in Saudi Arabia in the first stage of the championship, so it’s been very positive on our side of the energy generation side of the project.”