Ørsted Announces First Battery Storage Project

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

Danish offshore wind powerhouse Ørsted has this week announced its first entry into the large-scale battery storage sector with the announcement of the 20 megawatt (MW) Carnegie Road battery storage project which will provide services to the UK’s National Grid.

Ørsted is one of the world’s leading offshore wind developers, having slowly transitioned from a traditional oil and gas energy company into a renewable energy powerhouse. The company has been slowly positioning itself to begin expanding its reach, and in February, in the company’s annual financial report for 2017, hinted at the possibility of expanding into the solar and energy storage sectors.

Storage project in Chile using NEC’s GSS Grid Storage Solution

The latter of these was confirmed this week when Ørsted announced its involvement in the Carnegie Road battery storage project, a 20 MW battery storage project which is set to be developed in Liverpool, England, and will provide services to the UK’s National Grid to support grid stability during shifts in power generation. The move comes a few months after Ørsted announced that it would develop a 1 MW storage pilot in Taiwan.

The Carnegie Road project was originally developed by Shaw Energi (which will be providing Ørsted with support) and will install NEC Energy Solutions’ GSS Grid Storage Solution battery storage.

“We’re excited to develop this project. As batteries have a very high-frequency response capability we believe they’ll play an important role in providing services for the support of the stability of the power grid,” said Ryan O’Keefe, Head of Energy Storage & Solar at Ørsted. “The demand for these services is likely to grow in the UK as the country is expected to decommission large parts of its carbon-based generation fleet and introduce more renewables generation.”

Ørsted has been toying with the idea of jumping into the energy storage sector for a while now, not only with its 1 MW Taiwanese trial project but also as a potential addition to the 800 MW Bay State Wind offshore project proposed for development in Massachusetts, United States. If Bay State Wind — a joint venture between Ørsted and New England’s premier transmission builder, Eversource — is given the go-ahead, Ørsted intends to combine the offshore wind farm with a 55 MW/110 MW-hour (MWh) energy storage option, which upon completion would result in the world’s largest wind-paired energy storage system for commercial-scale energy.

“The future energy system will be completely transformed from what it is today, with a smarter, more flexible grid, balancing supply and demand with new technology and cleaner energy generation,” added Matthew Wright, Managing Director of Ørsted UK. “We want to continue to be at the forefront of this exciting shift towards a decarbonised energy system.

“Acquiring the Carnegie Road plant is an important step forward as it’s our first commercial-scale battery storage project. We’re investing billions of pounds in the UK’s energy infrastructure and this is another significant investment that puts the UK at the heart of the global energy transition.”


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Joshua S Hill

I'm a Christian, a nerd, a geek, and I believe that we're pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I also write for Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk), and can be found writing articles for a variety of other sites. Check me out at about.me for more.

Joshua S Hill has 4403 posts and counting. See all posts by Joshua S Hill