Harmony Energy Income Trust has announced the official opening of what it says is Europe’s biggest battery energy storage system (BESS) by MWh – a 196MWh site in East Yorkshire.
The £75 million facility, located in Pillswood near Cottingham, uses a Tesla two-hour Megapack system and has the capacity to store as much as 196MWh of electricity in one cycle.
Adjacent to National Grid’s Creyke Beck substation, the site has the same connection point proposed for the Dogger Bank offshore windfarm.
Developed by Shell, the site has been dubbed the “world’s largest offshore wind farm” and is set to go live at the beginning of summer this year generating 3.6GW of renewable energy.
Octopus Energy has already signed a power purchase agreement with Shell to receive up to 2.4TWh of renewable energy per year from the wind farm.
The Pillswood BESS will enable the grid to maximise the efficiency of wind farms by providing critical balancing services to reduce the amount of time a wind farm needs to be curtailed due to supply/demand imbalances or network constraints, said the capital market company.
“We are delighted that our Pillswood Project, Europe’s biggest battery energy storage system (by MWh), has been officially opened,” said Peter Kavanagh, CEO at Harmony Energy Income Trust.
“Funded by Harmony Energy Income Trust, this is the first of six similar projects the Trust intends to deliver in the coming year. It is also a significant achievement for Harmony: this project is the third, and largest, battery energy storage project which we have developed and delivered.”
“I’d like to thank all our partners who helped ensure this scheme was completed well ahead of schedule – in particular Tesla who managed the project G2 Energy, Wilson Power Solutions and Northern Power Grid.”
“Battery energy storage systems are essential to unlocking the full potential of renewable energy in the UK, and we hope this particular one highlights Yorkshire as a leader in green energy solutions.”
