Statkraft has announced that it will provide market-access and optimisation services for 100MW of Gore Street Energy Storage Fund and Low Carbon storage projects in Northern Ireland.
The projects will be used to provide rapid frequency response and reserves to the national electricity grid within milliseconds of a generation event, and trade in the wholesale integrated single electricity market, using Statkraft’s automated trading platform UNITY.
Nick Heyward, head of energy storage for Statkraft, said the company was pleased to be working with Gore Street on these “important storage assets” that will “provide a key source of low-carbon flexibility in the Northern Irish electricity system”.
“Critical to the success of our optimisation of flexible assets has been the ongoing development of our UNITY Virtual Power Plant platform. Through a combination of advanced algorithmic trading, with 24/7 expert ‘human’ trader supervision, UNITY ensures the storage flexibility is deployed and traded into the right markets at the right time.
“This not only helps ensure the best value from storage assets today but also helps reduce risk and mitigate the impacts of any future changes in DS3 services in the future.”
The battery sites are located near Drumkee, County Tyrone and Mullavilly, County Armagh, and will be critical to transition to a low-carbon electricity system said Statkraft. This will add to the company’s growing portfolio of flexible assets across both Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is expected to surpass 200MW this year.
It follows Gore Street announcing earlier this week that the two 50MW battery assets in Northern Ireland are in the final stages of construction and testing, and are expected to start providing DS3 services from April.
Alex O’Cinneide, CEO of Gore Street Capital, investment manager of Gore Street Energy Storage Fund, added that as the largest energy storage assets in Northern Ireland “we believe Gore Street’s Drumkee and Mullavilly assets have a major role to play in securing the transformation of the Irish electricity market to one that is able to depend on much larger loads of intermittent sources of renewable generation, such as wind, effectively”.
“Assets such as these will be significant ensuring the energy security of this market going forward and Gore Street is proud to be playing an active role in this transformation.”