The Germany-based renewable energy developer ABO Wind has sold the largest stand-alone battery project in the company’s history to date to the energy storage fund of the Swiss Fund Manager SUSI Partners. As general contractor, ABO Wind is overseeing the entire development and implementation of the battery storage facility with a capacity of 50 megawatts, located in Kells, Northern Ireland. In addition, ABO Wind’s electrical engineers have planned and built a substation to feed in the electricity at the high-voltage level (110 kV).
SUSI Partners and ABO Wind have been successfully collaborating in several countries for many years. As a fund manager specialising in sustainable energy infrastructure, SUSI Partners was one of the first asset managers to focus on investments in energy storage alongside renewable energies and energy efficiency measures. “Battery storage plays a crucial role in the clean energy transition,” says Dr Julia Badeda, Head of Department for Hybrid Energy Systems and Storage at ABO Wind. “This first major storage project in Northern Ireland is an important milestone. In addition to wind and solar energy, our interdisciplinary specialist departments cover the entire value chain of large-scale battery storage projects, from planning and engineering to construction, grid connection, and operations.”
Commissioning is scheduled for 2022 and the construction is progressing according to plan. The battery storage manufactured by Nidec ASI will participate in the Irish capacity market. In addition, the high-capacity battery will provide services tendered by the transmission system operators EirGrid and SONI to stabilise the Irish electricity grid and to balance the fluctuating feed-in from wind farms. Both Ireland and Northern Ireland have set the goal of obtaining 70 per cent of their electricity mix from renewable energies by 2030. To achieve this, numerous batteries are currently being installed on the island. These switch on automatically when there is an imbalance in the grid, thus preventing frequency drops and blackouts.
“The large-scale storage facility in Kells paves the way for other similar projects that we are currently developing in several countries. The market for energy storage is very dynamic on a global scale, and especially in markets where renewables account for more than 25 per cent of the electricity mix,” says Dr Julia Badeda.
In addition, ABO Wind was commissioned by SUSI with the technical and commercial operational management of the battery. “We are pleased to remain associated with the project in the long term. This means that our operational management now extends the product range we offer to include 24/7 operation of battery storage systems,” says Badeda. With this first major battery project, ABO Wind is further strengthening the company’s position as an all-round expert for wind and solar farms, hybrid energy systems, and battery storage.
