DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, and storage specialist Fluence Energy, have announced the early start of commissioning for Ukraine’s largest battery energy storage project and one of the biggest in Eastern Europe.
The deployment of 200 MW of connected power across six locations is now entering the final phase of delivery, which includes commissioning, testing and first discharge of the batteries.
Six hundred and ninety eight Fluence Gridstack cubes with the batteries have been installed at six energy storage sites – each one with a capacity of between 20 MW and 50 MW. Collectively, they are able to store 400 MWh of electrical energy.
Under the contract with grid operator Ukrenergo, commercial operations are set to begin in October – before the start of Ukraine’s crucial winter heating season. It marks the first major energy project to be delivered since the signing of the US-Ukraine Economic Partnership Agreement in April.
Once fully operational, the systems will provide frequency and power reserve as well as balancing services to reinforce Ukraine’s grid. This is especially critical during outages and to reduce the necessity of implementing rolling power outages that affect the population and economy.
Maxim Timchenko, DTEK CEO, said: “With our partner Fluence we are fast-tracking innovation, building homegrown technical expertise and showing that even in wartime, progress is achievable.”
Julian Nebreda, CEO of Fluence, said: “[This] is one of the most impactful projects in our company’s history. The remote commissioning approach … ensures continuity and operational efficiency amid travel restrictions and will also enable faster scaling of any future deployments.” Due to the challenges of war and restricted access in Ukraine, this is the first project Fluence has fully commissioned remotely. It will continue to support commissioning and operations of the project remotely through diagnostics, testing and performance monitoring.
