The Renewables Infrastructure Group (TRIG) has become the latest investor to enter the large scale storage market after buying a 20MW project from RES for £20 million.
The Broxburn energy storage project is currently under construction in West Lothian, Scotland, and is expected to be completed early next year by RES, who will maintain the site as TRIG’s operations manager. It will be the first energy storage project acquired by TRIG and RES’ fourth project in the UK.
TRIG’s chair Helen Mahy CBE said: “The use of battery storage is becoming increasingly important in enabling grid networks to match fluctuations in the supply and demand of electricity and to stabilise power frequency. This becomes especially vital as the installed base of renewables generation increases.
“We are excited to be playing a part in this by investing in Broxburn, one of the first large-scale commercial power storage projects to be developed in the UK.”
The project is expected to have an operational life of 15 years but has secured an initial four year bespoke bilateral agreement to provide dynamic, two-way import and export sub-second balancing services to National Grid.
A spokesperson for RES explained: “This is a bilaterally negotiated service contract with NGET [National Grid Electricity Transmission]. Such an approach to contracting allows closer working ties than in a market-based approach and can be appropriate in the early stages of developing new services and creating new markets.”
RES secured this contract prior to last year’s Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) tender and provides the same service to National Grid that was hotly contested in August 2016.
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