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Europe’s largest battery storage project opens in UK
- 9 years ago (2014-12-17)
- Junior Isles
S&C Electric Company has begun operating Europe's largest battery-storage project. S&C Electric Europe, Samsung SDI and Younicos collaborated to deploy the technology onto a United Kingdom Power Networks substation in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, England.
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The fully automated 6MW/10MWh Smarter Network Storage (SNS) project will assess the role of energy storage in cost-effectively supporting the UK's Carbon Plan, and will save more than £6 million ($9.4 million) on traditional network-reinforcement methods.
The SNS project was awarded funding of £13.2 million ($20.6 million) by UK electricity regulator Ofgem in December 2012 under The Low Carbon Networks (LCN) Fund scheme, and will last four years, from January 2013 to December 2016.
S&C Electric Europe is the lead supplier to the £18.7 million ($29.2 million) project. Berlin-based Younicos contributed custom-built intelligent software architecture and components.
“Energy storage can play a major role in balancing the grid as it solves the problem of renewable intermittency by absorbing surplus power and releasing it when needed. This function simultaneously helps to securely balance capacity and supply, and protects the grid from stress events (e.g. power outages),” said Andrew Jones, managing director, S&C Electric Europe. “The introduction of energy storage in substations like the one at Leighton Buzzard can decrease the need and cost of traditional reinforcement, such as transformers and cabling.”
Ben Wilson, UK Power Networks' director of strategy and regulation and chief financial officer added: “It’s exciting to start the two-year trial. We will be testing a wide range of different services that storage can deliver to the network, and the wider electricity system.
“The project will allow us to explore and improve the economics of electrical energy storage, and assess the potential benefits to the electricity system in a number of sustainable and flexible ways. We have also been developing a first-of-its-kind platform to help us optimise and manage a wide range of different services that the storage can provide.”
Clemens Triebel, co-founder and chief technical officer at Younicos said: “This groundbreaking project forcefully demonstrates the many revenue streams and savings that energy storage can enable today... Together with UKPN, S&C, and other partners, we are showing grid operators, utilities and other stakeholders both in the UK and around the world a cost-effective way to reinforce and improve grid infrastructure, while facilitating increased deployment of clean energy from wind and solar.”