Co-location of large-scale energy storage systems with solar and wind generation is not an immediate prospect for the UK’s clean energy markets, although interest is there, an expert panel said today at the Energy Storage Summit.
Britain’s government is seeking to remove a significant hurdle for utility-scale co-located storage sites, enabling projects with combined capacities in excess of 50MW to proceed without requiring government consent.
Oil and gas giant British Petroleum has partnered with Tesla to install a storage battery at one of its subsidiaries’ wind farms in South Dakota, US, as part of a pilot program which could see the firm further embrace battery storage.
Guidance issued by Britain’s transmission grid operator on how to co-locate energy storage with generation facilities has been welcomed by an analyst at industry group the Renewable Energy Association.
The real-world performance of batteries paired with “Hywind” – the world’s first floating wind farm – will be analysed by the wind project’s owners, Masdar and Statoil.
UK energy regulator Ofgem has published guidance outlining how developers and asset owners can add storage to their subsidised solar installations without losing accreditation to the Renewables Obligation (RO) and Feed-in Tariff (FiT).
On-site energy storage is “the way that you make the subsidy free package work” for large scale solar according to climate change minister Claire Perry who has pointed to Anesco’s Clay Hill solar farm as proof of why the technology so longer needs financial support from tax payers.
Battery storage technology costs will have to fall by a further 30% before projects in the UK are feasible without lucrative frequency response revenues, a leading investor has said.
Amidst experiencing Model 3’s “production hell”, launching a semi truck, a new Roadster and a portable battery pack, Tesla’s work on a 129MWh energy storage system in South Australia appears on track to be completed in time.
Australia’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) will help finance the country’s first “unsubsidised large-scale grid-connected battery”, co-located with a wind farm in South Australia.
