September 29, 2022: -A decommissioned gas-fired power station in Britain is ready to be repurposed and changed into a battery storage facility, with those involved in the project that it will be able to provide “the equivalent of a full day’s energy consuming for 11,000 households.”
On Monday, London-listed Centrica said construction of the facility in Lincolnshire, a county in the East Midlands of England, had started.
U.S. company GE will supply the 50-megawatt project’s battery storage system. When up and going, the facility will store power from 43 onshore wind farms in Lincolnshire.
Centrica said the system could store 100-megawatt hours of electric energy. The facility is set to start operations in 2023 and is expected to run for 25 years.
“Storing renewable energy makes it possible to control better the peaks and troughs associated with renewable energy generation, charging the batteries when electricity demand is low and discharging when demand peaks,” Centrica said.
Practical, large-scale storage systems become increasingly important as renewable energy capacity grows. This is because while sources of energy like the sun and wind are renewable, they are not continuous.
The International Energy Agency stated that the “rapid scaling up of energy storage systems will be critical” when addressing the “hour-to-hour variability” of solar photovoltaic and wind electricity generation on the grid.
IEA stated that the investment in battery storage hit close to $10 billion globally in 2021 and is expected to be near $20 billion in 2022.
Several big companies have played in the energy storage sector in recent months.
It was announced in July that Norway’s Equinor would acquire U.S.-based battery storage developer East Point Energy after being done with the deal to take a 100% stake in the particular firm.
In August, BlackRock added that a fund under the management of BlackRock Real Assets had agreed to acquire Akaysha Energy. This Australian firm develops battery storage and renewable energy projects.
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On Tuesday, the intermittency of renewables was highlighted when energy firm SSE updated the market on its outlook and recent performance.
