China to build ‘Europe’s largest battery storage scheme’ in Wiltshire

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China Huaneng Group is set to complete what it claims will be Europe’s largest battery storage facility by the end of 2020 in Wiltshire.

The state-owned utility is building a 100MW/100MWh scheme understood to be managed by Shell-owned Limejump.

States the company: “In recent years, with the rapid development of wind power in UK, the intermittence and fluctuation of wind power output is making the imbalance of time for supply and demand more and more obvious. After the project’s operation, it will become the largest battery energy storage project in Europe, providing power source emergency support when the main grid has an accident, and elevating effectively the safe operation level of the grid.”

The project is actually two adjacent 49.9MW sites being developed simultaneously, given planning rules lifting that cap were only relaxed last October.

The scheme also involves g2 Energy, Penso Power, SSE and Sungrow.

The battery could be usurped as Europe’s largest should Intergen decide to push ahead with plans to construct up to 175MW of storage at Spalding.

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9 COMMENTS

  1. I hope that neither of these projects are using Lithium Ion batteries given their propensity to catch fire and produce toxic fumes that firefighter can’t even attempt to extinguish.

    In case anyone thinks I am a nimby, I’m not. It’s simply a case that all such grid scale energy storage schemes should use Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries which are tried, tested and safe. The problem is the world thinks only Lithium!

  2. I endorse Ian view

    VRFB are far more suitable for large installations and an investment of this size would want a lifespan of 25yrs and no likelihood of unknown disposal/recycling costs at the end of life

  3. Unfortunately they look at the upfront costs rather than life span and end of life disposal costs. VRFB are far more suitable to large scale grid storage and, as the above posts say, are far more safe. Time for the people making these decisions to look deeper into their projects. Leasing options on VRFB make them more competitive on upfront cost and over the lifetime they work out cheaper than Lithium options.

  4. This sounds like the proposal to build a huge li-ion battery on the Kent coast at Cleve Hill.

    Far safer to use Vanadium radox flow battery systems, or go straight to hydrogen generation as RYSE propose near Hernebay.

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