Engineering news
Renewable Energy Systems (RES) has this week announced its first UK contract to build and support a battery energy storage system (BESS) to demonstrate the benefits of energy storage on the grid for developers and distribution network operators.
RES, a global renewable energy company headquartered in the UK - which has pioneered energy storage projects in the US and Canada with a total energy storage construction portfolio of 78MW - has signed the EPC contract with Western Power Distribution (WPD).
The BESS will be embedded at a 1.5MW solar park at Copley Wood near Butleigh, Somerset, and connected to WPD’s South West 11kV network. RES has said the project is the first of its kind in the UK to explore the provision of ancillary services to a distribution network operator (DNO) from a BESS integrated with a grid scale solar farm.
The project is part of a major initiative being run by WPD, the electricity distributor for the Midlands, the South West and South Wales, to investigate the technical and commercial feasibility of battery energy storage combined within distributed generation installations in the UK.
The RES battery energy storage system
WPD’s Innovation and Low Carbon Networks Engineer, Jenny Woodruff, said: “Finding an economical way to store renewable energy will offer huge benefits to network operators and potentially enable more requests to install renewable energy generation connections to the distribution network. Through a series of trials, this project aims to identify to how the benefits of storage can be shared by all stakeholders in a way that does not cause conflicts.”
John Prendergast, project manager at RES, told PE: “For developers the benefits are really around two areas: one is the ability to shift solar power to peak times of day when the wholesale market values it more highly. Secondly, the battery gives them the ability to manage grid constraints on solar farms by storing power that would otherwise be lost”.
“For DNO’s there are a whole range of benefits. One is the ability to call on dispatchable services to manage constraints on the local network, so it’s a good way to matching local supply with demand. Another area is helping them to manage the stability of their networks, providing an asset on their local network from which they can procure reactive power services from and manage voltage on the network.”
The centrepiece of the WPD initiative is the 310kva/640kWh battery energy storage system being installed by RES, who will provide ongoing warranty support during the battery’s operation.
RES will utilise RESolve, its energy storage control and dispatch software system to provide 24/7 management of the battery’s operation. RESolve has been developed by a team of software engineers in the UK and has been rolled out on all of RES’ other energy storage projects in the North America. The ‘brain’ between the battery and the solar firm or the DNO, it tells the battery when to charge, discharge or when to provide reactive power and how much to provide to ensure all the value from the battery can be extracted.
The battery itself will be supplied by Chinese manufacturer BYD and will be fully self-contained including hundreds of individual battery cells, power conversion equipment and safety and monitoring systems. It relies on advanced lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) battery technology. Lithium batteries typically operate on a round-trip energy loss of 10-15%.
Prendergast said: “We have used BYD batteries on a good number of our earlier projects around the world and understand the technology and performance well so it is a good choice for this project.”
Gordon MacDougall, RES’ managing director for Western Europe, added: “We are confident that this project will open the door for other opportunities in the UK.”
The project is being delivered through Ofgem’s Network Innovation Allowance, and is being run in conjunction with British Solar Renewables and the National Solar Centre.