NEWS
UK National Grid names winning suppliers for enhanced frequency response support For the record, seven battery firms won UK National Grid contracts on August 26 to provide 200MW subsecond enhanced frequency response support to the grid. It is the first time that batteries will be used for grid-scale energy storage in the UK. The bid winners have all signed four-year contracts, which will begin on or before March 1, 2018. Lead-acid battery manufacturer Belectric, which confirmed on September 1 that it was being bought by German utility RWE, said it had won its 10MW bid with a lithium-ion version of its Energy Buffer Unit, which is also produced with lead-acid batteries. The National Grid invited tenders on April 15 and by the closing date of July 15 had whittled 37 bids down to just eight, with one of the
winners, energy investor Low Carbon, being handed a total of 50MW in two contracts, one in Kent, one in Cumbria. The six other providers, RES, Eon UK, EDF Energy Renewables, Element Power and Vattenfall, will all supply lithium-ion technology. Cordi O’Hara, the director of UK System Operator at the National Grid, said: “We are constantly looking to the future to understand how we can make the most of the energy available to us. “This project is at the very core of our power responsive work, to balance the grid by the most efficient means possible, saving money and energy. “These awards show that we can work with industry to bring forward new technology and I believe storage
has much to contribute to the flexible energy system of tomorrow. This is the beginning of an exciting new chapter for the industry.” Adam Sims, senior account manager at the National Grid, said the beauty of batteries lay in their flexibility. “You can use them for congestion management, frequency response, all sorts of things,” he said. “Costs are going down and we think it’s going to be a major penetration into storage in the UK. “We have looked at other countries and how they use them, and Germany is the biggest player. But the model they look for is very short term, far smaller scale. We have a different approach. “We want to give people certainty over a longer period of time to drive costs down. It will be a four-year
investment time for the right balance.” “The requirement for EFR is driven by the change in generation mix from thermal plant to renewable plant,” said Gilly West, an official, at the UK National Grid, who said the new systems would need to transform existing EFR provision times from more than ten seconds to less than one. “The different technical characteristics result in the system frequency becoming less stable, with smaller imbalances in supply and demand creating larger fluctuations than previously experienced. “With fast acting battery technologies becoming financially viable, EFR is an economic solution to this issue that also creates a route to market for a new class of technology.”
Leclanché partners SGEM moves into US energy storage with work for PJM For the record, Leclanché was selected by Swiss Green Electricity Management Group in August as the engineering, procurement and construction contractor and battery energy storage system supplier for the Marengo Energy Storage Plant in the PJM Market for the north-east of the US. This preferred partnership agreement with SGEM for investment into utility-scale energy storage projects begins with the Marengo project. Leclanché revealed news of the partnership in October. The Marengo 20 MW/10 MWh grid-scale energy storage project is among the largest, fully commercial battery storage projects in North America. The Chica-
go-area project is being developed for PJM Interconnection, the regional market transmission operator. It was developed by GlidePath Power, which recently sold three similar projects in the US. The Marengo Energy Storage Plant will be interconnected to the local Commonwealth Edison Company electric grid and will provide real-time frequency regulation service to PJM. The storage facility will respond almost instantly to the continually changing needs of the grid, providing real-time frequency regulation and allowing PJM to deliver higher quality reliable electrical service at a lower cost to its end-users in 13 states and the District
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of Columbia. “The increasing share of renewable energy in the electricity mix poses substantial challenges to grid stability. As a direct result, demand for frequency regulation is growing considerably,” says Leclanché. “The smart deployment of battery energy storage systems (BESS) is the lowest-cost solution to support grid operators in their efforts to reduce and defer their investments into transmission and distribution infrastructure upgrades.” SGEM provides equity capital, leads project finance and supervises the construction and operation of energy storage infrastructure assets to deliver returns to its investors.
The group invests in energy storage projects on a build-own-operate project finance model. Thanks to its partnership with Leclanché, SGEM enjoys the right of first offer for all qualified projects of the company which represent more than 85 MWh for 2017. “The formation of SGEM and its acquisition of projects sends a strong signal that international investors are recognizing the tremendous potential of this exciting new infrastructure asset class,” says Anil Srivastava, CEO of Leclanché. “The pipeline of similar projects will continue to generate a high-growth demand in North America. This leads the way to additional future projects.”
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