The Pillswood Project, Europe’s biggest battery energy storage system, has been finally been fired up near Hull in Yorkshire.
Developed by Harmony Energy Limited and running on a Tesla two-hour Megapack system, the facility is said to be able to store up to 196 MWh of electricity in a single cycle—or enough energy to power 300,000 UK homes for two hours.
According to the firm, the power system will bring “critical balancing services” to the country’s electricity grid network, while allowing for fossil fuels to be replaced with eco-friendly, renewable sources of energy.
Jaak
Next year, the adjacent Dogger Bank, the world’s largest offshore wind farm, will go online, sharing the same connection point with Pillswood Project to maximize the efficiency of the wind farms, such as limiting the amount of time it will need to be switched off.
Just to provide some numbers for comparison… As stated in the OP, this Pillswood Project can deliver 196 MWh over 2 hours, or 98 MW of power output. From the following, the daily peak in the UK is around 40 GW, or 40,000 MW.
98 / 40000 = 0.00245 or 0.245 percent of the daily peak, for this time of year, with the current weather conditions.
The number the OP provided was two hours for 300,000 homes. If it can provide two hours for it’s small area that’s enough to flatten the peak off that small area.
Of course, that’s no where near enough to deal with the entire UK.
Several years ago California also started out with small grid-scale battery storage systems, but now the California grid has lots of grid scale battery storages systems as discussed below. This does not include all the battery storage systems installed in residential, commercial, school, hospital and government buildings.
November 2021
Battery storage is on the rise in California, increasing electric reliability while reducing electricity costs and greenhouse gas emissions.
California added 1,400 megawatts (MW) of grid-scale batteries to the electric grid in 2021. Good news for a grid that increasingly relies on renewable and zero-carbon sources. By capturing renewable energy when it is plentiful to use when it is scarce, batteries enable clean energy to continue powering the grid as the sun sets, reducing GHG emissions by offsetting use of natural gas peaker plants.
On July 16, 2021, California hit a major milestone when, for five minutes, grid-connected batteries provided more than 1,000 MW of electric power for the first time ever — enough electricity to power 750,000 — 1,000,000 California homes. The milestone was double that of 501 MW set just three and a half months before.
The boom in storage does not appear to be slowing. Between that record day and the end of August, it increased another 41 percent to 1,420 MW. The CEC projects that 49,000 MW of battery storage will be needed to meet the clean energy goals of Senate Bill 100, which requires California’s electricity system to be carbon free by 2045. To achieve this goal, California will need to sustain this rapid buildout for years to come.
Pete is missing the point made in the article:
Dogger Bank, the world’s largest offshore wind farm, will go online, sharing the same connection point with Pillswood Project to maximize the efficiency of the wind farms, such as limiting the amount of time it will need to be switched off.
Jaak