Wednesday 27 June 2018

Battery storage at Scottish floating wind farm launched

A battery storage unit has been installed at the world’s first floating offshore wind farm in Scotland.

Equinor - formerly Statoil – and Masdar launched the Batwind battery at the 30MW Hywind wind farm, located 25 kilometres off the coast of Peterhead.

Electricity generated at the offshore wind farm - enough to power 20,000 homes a year - will be transported via cables to an onshore substation where the 1MW battery storage is placed and connected to the grid.

The capacity of the battery is equivalent to that of more than 128,000 iPhones.

Sebastian Bringsvaerd, Development Manager for Hywind and Batwind said: “While there are many energy storage products and solutions in the market, the battery software solutions are less developed. We want to teach the battery when to hold back and store electricity and when to send power to the grid, thus increasing value of the power.

“It will be really exciting to see how we can develop the combined battery and software solution and make Batwind as smart as possible.”