Batteries increase wind farm utilisation

Wind turbines
marshman
Posts: 614
Joined: Thu Jun 17, 2021 7:58 pm

Re: Batteries increase wind farm utilisation

#11

Post by marshman »

Moxi wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 5:47 pm Plus one to Stinsy's comment, the connections are there, theres space around if not in the WT - just seems an obvious option unless anyone knows better.

Moxi
Yes there is plenty of space BUT taking Little Cheyne Court as an example the land is actively farmed pretty much right up to the base of the turbines. (see the pics below). So to add a "standard" container sized battery pack to each turbine would encroach on that farmland, if using Tesla Magapacks (30ft long, so 3/4 the size of a standard 40ft container) then you would need additional space around them for security fencing - you can pretty much access all of Little Cheyne Court on foot or even drive up to them along the farm tracks. I can imagine a lot of opposition down here to adding that to each turbine. Then each one (assuming Tesla Megapack ) is just under 4MWh capacity. The turbines on that site are rated at 2.5MW so a couple of hours and the pack is charged. The flip side is, a couple of hours and it is discharged. Yes it will increase utilisation but I see the biggest issue as long term storage where we have low wind for days - battery storage, pumped storage is OK for a few hours to help ride peak demand but not longer periods and I see nothing viable on the horizon, certainly not at the scale needed. "small" battery packs at a wind (or solar) farm are not going to solve that one.

Mounting batteries in the turbine tower sounds a good idea but I think is a non starter - too many different designs, access problems and also towers are not designed to support the massive weight of batteries - though I suppose they could be.

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Last edited by marshman on Sun Jun 11, 2023 1:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
dan_b
Posts: 2329
Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2021 10:16 am
Location: SW London

Re: Batteries increase wind farm utilisation

#12

Post by dan_b »

Paying turbines to stop generating is actually not all that hare-brained.
It's a lot quicker and easier to balance local network capacity issues by turning off some turbines than it is to completely switch off an entire gas plant. It actually provides additional flexibility. Which will become increasingly useful as we move ever forwards to getting fossil fuel generation off our Grid completely.
Yuff wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 10:14 am
Swwils wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 8:37 pmAnd the cost.
Which would be cheaper installing the batteries or paying them billions to switch them off, which is the current hare-brained solution…. :P
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Coriolis
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2022 10:42 pm

Re: Batteries increase wind farm utilisation

#13

Post by Coriolis »

Moxi wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 9:06 am So a few Iso freight containers of batteries in-between wind turbines is a hazard to the wind turbines ? I didn't think they were that fragile ? also are the industrial batteries a different chemistry to the pylontechs we tend to install as the general consensus seems to be low fire risk for those ? What about capacitors as an alternate albeit very temporary storage medium ? are they any safer ?

Moxi
The risk was in specifically in response to your suggestion to put them inside the actual WT towers. (There was another post not long ago with the same suggestion).

Co-located BESS already exists in UK. Whitelee onshore wind farm has a 50MW BESS attached now.

https://www.scottishpower.com/news/page ... ystem.aspx

And large scale solar farms are typically being developed with BESS on site as well.

https://www.energy-storage.news/uk-deve ... hallenges/

BESS for offshore wind is more likely to be located next to the onshore substations. E.g. Blackhillock and Creyke Beck (see the recent thread about the largest grid connected battery).
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