Golden Match: Integrating Storage at Offshore Wind Farms
Another example is retrofitting existing wind farms with intelligent software and storage like the old 90 MW Burbo Bank wind farm (ten kilometers offshore of Liverpool). This summer DONG Energy, the Danish wind energy giant, announced it’s going to install a 2 MW Lithium-ion battery energy system of ABB. The system ‘will enable the integration of clean wind energy without compromising grid stability and power stability to consumers’, Giandomenico Rivetti, managing director of ABB High Voltage unit, said.
Battery storage in wind farms, therefore, will become build-in. It simplifies the development process and foster new, direct value chain relationships, enabling vendors to capture value for storage right from the start.
Tesla, one of the biggest battery producers in the world, may take the lead. This autumn it has partnered with Vestas Wind Systems A/S to combine wind turbines and batteries. ‘We’re working with specialized companies, including Tesla, to explore and test how wind turbines and storage can work together to lower the cost of energy’, Vesta said in a statement.
While battery storage is feasible already, another development, seasonal storage, looms at the horizon. By its very nature, batteries can’t take up this task while large-scale pumped hydro, accountable for over 95 percent of all electricity storage, will reach its limits before 2030. With wind and solar on the rise, other ways have to be explored, from artificial lakes to storing excess electricity from nearby offshore wind farms and storage in gas or liquids.
The Netherlands is quite far at P2G, as ‘power to gas’ is sometimes abbreviated. P2G converts electricity, either by electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen or to combine hydrogen with CO2 to methane. At the natural gas buffer Zuidwending (Groningen, NL.) Gasunie New Energy and EnergyStock will build a one MW pilot, the biggest of its kind in Europe, to convert electricity into hydrogen. Contrary to batteries, P2G offers possibilities to seasonally store Gigawatts of energy into hydrogen that can be transported from wind farms at the North Sea into the onshore grid.
Meanwhile, the Dutch association Energy Storage NL pleads for a European Battery Alliance to be located in the Netherlands. Jillis Raadschelders, chairman of Energy Storage NL and vice-president of EASE, thinks a European alternative of lithium, nowadays mostly extracted from vast salt lakes in South America, Tibet and the USA, is ‘most welcome’.
Raadschelders: ‘The Netherlands has a number of world players in the field of material technology for batteries – including DSM and Sabic – and also a proven track record in manufacturing technology and production automation, especially in the Eindhoven region. In addition, we recently see a number of high-tech start-ups for battery materials (LeydenJar) and new battery concepts (Elestor, DrTen). Together with parties for industrial automation the Netherlands has a strong ecosystem in which battery production can take place and can develop strongly.’
Image: Artist impression of an offshore transformer station for Borssele Alpha project (700 MW). Courtesy: TenneT
Battery storage in wind farms, therefore, will become build-in. It simplifies the development process and foster new, direct value chain relationships, enabling vendors to capture value for storage right from the start.
Tesla, one of the biggest battery producers in the world, may take the lead. This autumn it has partnered with Vestas Wind Systems A/S to combine wind turbines and batteries. ‘We’re working with specialized companies, including Tesla, to explore and test how wind turbines and storage can work together to lower the cost of energy’, Vesta said in a statement.
While battery storage is feasible already, another development, seasonal storage, looms at the horizon. By its very nature, batteries can’t take up this task while large-scale pumped hydro, accountable for over 95 percent of all electricity storage, will reach its limits before 2030. With wind and solar on the rise, other ways have to be explored, from artificial lakes to storing excess electricity from nearby offshore wind farms and storage in gas or liquids.
The Netherlands is quite far at P2G, as ‘power to gas’ is sometimes abbreviated. P2G converts electricity, either by electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen or to combine hydrogen with CO2 to methane. At the natural gas buffer Zuidwending (Groningen, NL.) Gasunie New Energy and EnergyStock will build a one MW pilot, the biggest of its kind in Europe, to convert electricity into hydrogen. Contrary to batteries, P2G offers possibilities to seasonally store Gigawatts of energy into hydrogen that can be transported from wind farms at the North Sea into the onshore grid.
Meanwhile, the Dutch association Energy Storage NL pleads for a European Battery Alliance to be located in the Netherlands. Jillis Raadschelders, chairman of Energy Storage NL and vice-president of EASE, thinks a European alternative of lithium, nowadays mostly extracted from vast salt lakes in South America, Tibet and the USA, is ‘most welcome’.
Raadschelders: ‘The Netherlands has a number of world players in the field of material technology for batteries – including DSM and Sabic – and also a proven track record in manufacturing technology and production automation, especially in the Eindhoven region. In addition, we recently see a number of high-tech start-ups for battery materials (LeydenJar) and new battery concepts (Elestor, DrTen). Together with parties for industrial automation the Netherlands has a strong ecosystem in which battery production can take place and can develop strongly.’
Image: Artist impression of an offshore transformer station for Borssele Alpha project (700 MW). Courtesy: TenneT
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