Wind

Proposal for Offshore Wind Battery Storage Launched

Plans are under way to install a pilot 1-MWh lithium battery–based storage system in 2018 at the world’s first floating wind farm in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

The “Batwind” system, to be installed at the Hywind pilot park offshore of Peterhead, is being developed in cooperation with Scottish universities and suppliers under a new memorandum of understanding signed on March 18. According to its developers, the storage system could help mitigate intermittency and optimize output—and this could in turn improve efficiency and lower costs for offshore wind.

“The pilot in Scotland will provide a technological and commercial foundation for the implementation of Batwind in full-scale offshore wind farms, opening new commercial opportunities in a growing market,” said Norwegian energy firm Statoil, which is developing the Hywind Scotland project and spearheading the Batwind project. The 30-MW Hywind project, which will comprise five floating wind turbines 25 kilometers offshore Peterhead, is currently under construction and should come online by 2017. Statoil has said the $248 million offshore wind project will be built at a 60% to 70% cost reduction from the Hywind demonstration project in Norway owing to technological innovations (for more, see “Statoil to Build World’s First Floating Offshore Wind Farm” in POWER’s January 2016 issue).

The Batwind battery and converter integrated storage system (Figure 4) is expected to capture wind over-generation, storing excess power for sale when capacity is needed, thus reducing balancing costs. Statoil expects that increases in power market value will come with “opportunities to capture price peaks through arbitrage.”

wind battery

4. Right off the bat. Norwegian multinational energy company Statoil has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Scottish government, the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, and Scottish Enterprise—Scotland’s economic development agency—to pilot a new battery storage system for offshore wind energy at its Hywind Scotland wind farm. The floating wind farm is under construction off the coast of Peterhead, in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Courtesy: Statoil

—Sonal Patel, associate editor

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