The first battery used to store energy from wind power from an offshore turbine farm in the Buchan Deep, off Peterheid, has been installed by its Norwegian developers.
Equinor, formerly known as Statoil, started handing out contracts to deliver a 1 megawatt Lithium battery storage system for the Hywind wind farm off the Scottish coast last year.
The company the system was connected so that Hywind power could move through submarine cables to the battery storage facility and then onto the Scottish grid.
Electricity produced at the world’s first floating offshore wind farm Hywind Scotland, located 25 kilometers off the coast of Peterhead, will be transported via cables to an onshore substation where the 1 MW batteries are placed and connected to the grid. The battery capacity is the equivalent of more than 128,000 web-phones.
Sebastian Bringsvaerd, development manager for Hywind and Batwind, said: “As the wind is not always blowing energy storage technologies like batteries and other ways of storing electricity, is expected to become increasingly important to secure grid stability.
“The variability of renewable energy can to a certain extent be managed by the grid. But to make renewable energy more competitive and integrate even more renewables to the grid, we will need to find new, smart solutions for energy storage to provide firm power. How to do this in a smart and value creating way is what we are aiming to learn from Batwind.
“The brainwork is in the algorithms, which Equinor and partners Masdar are developing, based on multiple data sources including weather forecasts, market prices, maintenance schedules, consumption patterns and grid services.
“Digitalisation is a key driver here. The more we feed Batwind’s power management system with data, the smarter it gets. In addition, Batwind can be utilised for other renewable energy sources including solar and onshore wind. We believe this will expand the market for all renewable energy sources.”
According to a recent report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the installed costs of battery storage systems could fall by two-thirds (66%) by 2030.
The Batwind storage solution works, in many respects, like an energy warehouse. Equinor and Masdar will test where to build the warehouse; how big it should be and how to run the logistics.
Meanwhile Swedish energy group Vattenfall has appointed Danielle Lane as its new UK manager.
She previously worked at the Crown Estate, Orsted and Centrica and will manage Vattenfall’s offshore wind pipeline.
28 Jun 2018
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