Swedish energy giant Vattenfall has found a way to further cut the cost of grid-scale energy storage: share the infrastructure with a wind farm.
The company has announced the commissioning of what it said was “the largest co-located battery installed in the United Kingdom” — a 22-megawatt plant, which shares electrical plans with the Pen y CyMoedd wind farm in Wales.
Developers of many current and upcoming wind projects are studying energy storage as a way of earning extra revenues from arbitrage, by storing power until it can be sold for a higher price. But in Vattenfall’s case, the wind and battery plants will operate independently.
The 76-turbine wind farm, which is Vattenfall’s largest onshore project and also the biggest in England and Wales, was opened for business in September 2017 and delivers up to 228 megawatts of power direct to the U.K. grid.
Pen y Cymoedd is capable of meeting the equivalent electricity needs of more than 13 percent of households in Wales and displaces an average of around 331,000 tons of carbon dioxide from fossil-fueled generation every year, said Vattenfall in a press release.
The GBP £400 million ($532 million) project was officially opened in September 2017.
The battery system, meanwhile, shares electrical infrastructure with the wind farm but earns its keep by delivering ancillary services, and specifically enhanced frequency response, to electricity network operator National Grid.
The battery system is made up of six shipping container-sized units, five of which house 500 i3 BMW-manufactured battery packs. Each of the new BMW lithium-ion batteries has a capacity of 33 kilowatt hours and is adapted for stationary storage applications, Vattenfall said.
In March last year, Vattenfall inked a deal with BMW Group for a supply of batteries originally destined for the i3 electric vehicle series. The energy company committed to buy 1,000 of the lithium-ion batteries.
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