NEWS


battery@pyc is the UK’s largest co­located storage battery installation


Vattenfall’s


A new PV partnership


The solar partnership between E.ON and Google is developing into a European success story. Since May 2017, the joint Sunroof platform, which determines the solar potential of millions of buildings, has been bringing new solar energy systems onto the roofs of domestic homes. Homeowners can be happy:


Vattenfal has begun commercial operations focussed on a Welsh battery storage scheme, believed to be the UK’s largest co-located with an onshore wind farm. The 22MW battery@pyc, which shares electrical infrastructure with the Pen y Cymoedd onshore wind farm, will help National Grid maintain frequency levels and reliability of electricity supply on the GB transmission network with a service known as Enhanced Frequency Response.


Battery@pyc, located in the upper Rhondda, Cynon and


Afan valleys, is made up of six shipping container sized units, five of which house 500 i3 BMW manufactured battery packs. Gunnar Groebler, Vattenfall’s Head of Business Area


Wind, said: “Vattenfall is on the road to a smart, digitalised future, free from fossil fuels within just one generation. I can think of few other energy installations which better demonstrate what that future looks like than battery@pyc.” Claus Wattendrup, Head of Business Unit Solar & Batteries, told UKPN: “This is Vattenfall’s largest battery installation to date, where we make use of synergies at our existing wind farms sites – such as at Pen y Cymoedd or the Princess Alexia Wind Farm in the Netherlands. Hybrid renewable parks will play a larger role in the future and we are leading this development.” Nick Entwistle, Vattenfall’s battery@pyc construction


Project Manager, comments: “Installing a battery of this scale, co-located with a wind farm, has been a fascinating electrical engineering challenge, a challenge that has made best use of Vattenfall’s expertise and ingenuity. “We also had expert back up; we couldn’t have done it


without Belectric, EDS, Quad Consult and Electric Power Solutions.” Natural Resources Wales (NRW), which manage the


land at the Pen y Cymoedd wind farm site on behalf of the Welsh Government, hailed its partnership with Vattenfall as this important milestone was reached. James Laing, Natural Resources Wales reports: “The environment is our most valuable natural asset and sustainable initiatives like this that offer creative solutions to energy problems puts NRW at the forefront of Welsh Government’s low carbon economy, climate change and green growth programmes.” Battery@pyc will use new lithium-ion batteries with a


capacity of 33 kilowatt hours (kWh) supplied by BMW and adapted for a stationary application. The 76-turbine Pen y Cymoedd onshore wind farm is


capable of meeting the equivalent electricity needs of more than 15% of households in Wales every year. It also boosts delivery of Wales’s climate change ambitions, displacing in an average year more than 300,000 tonnes of CO2 from fossil-fuelled generation.


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the one-year programme will be extended until the end of 2018. From this month, Sunroof is being made fully


available to homeowners in the UK. E.ON will be the first energy company in Britain and Italy to offer its customers a digital assessment of the PV potential of their homes – simple, free-of-charge and personally tailored. All you have to do is enter your address online. Based on a few additional key parameters, the construction of a solar energy system can be planned. Sunroof's websites combine technologies such as Google


Earth and Google Maps, 3D models and machine learning, i.e. automated soft- ware improvement, to provide an accurate estimate of a home’s individual solar potential. Sunroof calculates how


much sunlight falls on each roof during the year. The software also takes into account weather data. It further calculates the position of the sun at different seasons, the area and inclination of the roof as well as the shade of surrounding buildings or trees. In the end, Sunroof 'translates' the determined amount of light into energy and the potential cost savings. The data is calculated by the software company tetraeder as an additional Partner in the sun- roof project. Based on this data, customers will be able to request a complete package consisting of a photovoltaic module and the E.ON SolarCloud, provided optionally with Aura battery storage.


Crown Estate Scotland extends Nova’s Shetland tidal array seabed lease: tidal power to become a commercial reality


C


rown Estate Scotland has granted an extension to Nova’s existing seabed lease at Bluemull Sound in Shetland, increasing the capacity of the site lease from 0.5MW to


2MW. The extension will also see the current lease period extend until 2041. The lease extension builds on the successful operation of Nova’s Bluemull Sound turbines


over the last two years. In 2016, the Shetland Tidal Array became the world’s first offshore tidal energy array, delivered with over 80% supply chain content from Scotland. The extension of the Bluemull Sound Lease provides opportunities for further deployment of turbines as part of a larger array and creates the prospect of a longer-term operation in Shetland. The next phase involves the installation of an additional three turbines by 2020, under the EnFAIT project: a flagship European tidal energy technology initiative led by Nova, in a consortium of nine leading industrial, academic and research organisations from across Europe. Patrick Ross-Smith, Shetland Manager for Nova Innovation, tells UKPN: “We see this as a big vote of confidence from Crown Estate Scotland for tidal energy. The experience and data we have developed from deploying and operating the turbines in the world’s first offshore tidal energy array are helping us to optimise our technology and processes. This lease extension paves the way for expanding the array, using the next generation of Nova turbines: further driving down the costs of this clean and predictable source of renewable energy.” Mark McKean, Development Manager for Crown Estate Scotland, comments: “We’ve


watched the development of Nova Innovation’s Bluemull Sound site with interest and are really pleased to be able to support further growth of this project with this lease extension. With their ongoing work to further enhance the technology to be utilised at the Shetland site, Nova is demonstrating that tidal energy projects are truly coming of age. During the last 12 months we have witnessed a significant upturn in tidal energy deployments within Scottish waters .”


MAY‐JUNE 2018 UK POWER NEWS


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