The projects include a 57MW battery in Braintree, Essex, a 47.5MW battery in Indian Queens, Saint Austell, and a 47.5MW battery near Mannington in Dorset.
EDF Renewables recently oversaw the energisation of a 52MW battery in Sundon, Bedfordshire, which went live in July. Although MWh figures had not been provided at the time of writing, EDF Renewables claims the six installations – totalling 313MW – are enough to power around 400,000 homes for two hours.
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Rapid scale up of storage is needed to complement the expansion of renewable energy that the new government hopes can decarbonise the grid by 2030. Achieving a zero-carbon electricity system by this date will require tripling solar capacity to 50GW, quadrupling offshore wind to 55GW and doubling onshore wind to 35GW.
National Grid ESO estimates that between 20-30GW of battery storage is required by 2030 to facilitate this expansion of intermittent renewable power. Globally, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has calculated that energy storage will need to increase sixfold in order to support COP28 pledges to triple worldwide renewable energy capacity to 11TW by 2030.
“Our upcoming project pipeline will strengthen the UK’s capacity to integrate more renewables and will allow the grid to be more flexible and resilient by managing electricity supply and demand,” said Simone Sullivan, head of storage at EDF Renewables UK.
“Battery storage is critical to enhancing our energy security and to achieving the new government’s 2030 targets. We have a strong momentum behind our projects, helping the UK to reap the benefits of cost-effective, clean renewable energy and a modern, flexible grid.”
The six lithium-ion projects EDF Renewables is rolling out are designed to meet short-duration storage demand periods of around two hours. However, to fully decarbonise the grid, longer-duration battery storage will also be required, for which lithium-ion is not well suited.
Redox flow batteries are one of the technologies with the potential to fill this gap, as they can cycle tens of thousands of times with minimal degradation, filling longer duration gaps of 4-8 hours. The Engineer will be examining flow batteries in more detail in its upcoming September issue.
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