Anesco secures authorization for 50MW battery site readied to perform multiple grid-balancing roles

• Anesco's new 50MW battery storage site has been given the green light by Brentwood Borough Council, with the project to be one more example of exactly how batteries are profiting the grid and offering returns for investors, the company has stated.

The facility is to have a battery energy storage system (BESS) making up 28 battery devices situated beside a 132kV substation in Essex, England, with Brentwood Borough Council taking into consideration Anesco's dedication to return the site to its natural state after the battery plant's expected 40-year life expectancy is up.

The programmer will certainly additionally make "substantial environmental improvements" to the site, consisting of planting trees, hedges and also wildflowers, creating scrubland and also three new ponds and working to boost the state of an existing fish pond.

Anesco, among the UK's pioneers of battery storage, has established several projects in the country already, consisting of retrofitting batteries to several of its solar farms. The company built Clayhill, the UK's initial subsidy-free large-scale solar-plus-storage project, which it offered last year to GRIDSERVE, a team now building a network of location electric car battery chargers.

In November 2020 Anesco offered 81MW of operational battery storage projects for ₤ 28.2 million (US$ 36.46 million at the time) to stock exchange provided energy storage financier Gore Street Energy Storage Fund and in June this year Anesco itself was gotten by personal equity company Ara Partners as well as technological and also industrial solutions company Aksiom Services Group.

Evolving business case for batteries

Business case for grid-connected energy storage has evolved as well as currently uses multiple income streams for supplying essential solutions to the UK's transmission operator National Grid, Anesco income optimisation head Alan Smallwood informed sibling site Energy-Storage. information.

"When in position, the Brentwood battery storage facility will certainly have the prospective to produce profits in a variety of various methods, by sustaining National Grid to balance the UK's energy system as well as to maintain grid frequency, ultimately lowering the overall price for the end customers," Smallwood stated.

As the amount of variable renewable energy on the system grows, the need to balance that intermittency of power and the volatility it develops on the networks does also. Smallwood stated that the 50MW project in Brentwood will certainly perform applications consisting of ancillary services, which "reward battery drivers for supporting grid stability by aiding keep grid frequency at required levels".

After the success of batteries to help stabilise frequency in selected markets of the United States like PJM Interconnection which extends all or parts of 13 various US states, the UK has also been something of a very early adopter on permitting battery storage to provide these solutions. Although its initial venture right into this area was a 2016 tender for multi-year contracts for boosted frequency response (EFR), National Grid has because started to roll out a more merchant approach, enabling assets to contend to meet grid frequency balancing demands.

Alan Smallwood stated that the Anesco project will certainly play into the Dynamic Containment market, the most recent such grid solutions chance from the network operator, which he explained is "developed to act swiftly when triggered by a fault on the system, to capture and also 'contain' the resulting inconsistency in frequency".

An additional important earnings stream for UK battery storage-- as well as the new Anesco project-- is the Balancing Mechanism, the primary means by which National Grid makes certain supply and demand for power on the grid are matched in any way times.

Previously this year, in Volume 26 of our quarterly journal PV Tech Power, Solar Media author Molly Lempriere discovered the 'jigsaw of value' in UK energy storage - the weaving together of a business situation based on multiple different profits opportunities. The UK now has more than 1.3 GW of operational battery storage possessions and a pipe of projects in growth completing almost 16GW.