S&C Electric Europe, Samsung SDI and Younicos have signed a joint agreement to deploy Europe's largest intelligent network storage project, onto a UK Power Networks substation.They say that this will save an estimated £6m in conventional network reinforcement methods. By providing frequency regulation as well as load shifting, the battery-based project will also stabilise the grid more effectively than traditional thermal generators, providing more 'space' on the grid for intermittent renewable energies.
The fully automated 6MW/10MWh 'Smarter Network Storage' (SNS) battery technology project will be installed at Leighton Buzzard primary substation, in order to assess the role of energy storage in cost effectively delivering the UK's Carbon Plan. The technology can provide a range of benefits to the wider electricity system, including absorbing energy, then releasing it to meet demand, to help support capacity constraints and to balance the influx of intermittent and inflexible low carbon technologies onto the grid.
The SNS project aims to implement a range of technical and commercial innovations to facilitate the more efficient and economic adoption of storage and will demonstrate its value in areas of the electricity system outside the boundaries of the distribution network. The project 'will explore the capabilities and value in alternative revenue streams for storage', while deferring conventional reinforcement measures, such as transformers, cable and overhead lines. It has been awarded funding of £13.2 million by Ofgem, under The Low Carbon Networks (LCN) Fund scheme in December 2012 and will run for last four years, until December 2016.
It is expected to generate new knowledge about the challenges of integrating large-scale storage, and provide the industry with a greater understanding and a detailed assessment of the business case and full economics.
Research carried out at Imperial College London has calculated savings of £3bn a year by the 2020s, based on the deployment of 2GW of energy storage. The value increases significantly with increasing proportions of renewable generation, with savings of £10 bn a year identified towards 2050, based on 25 GW of capacity.
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