Green Hydrogen for Scotland project targets 40MW of solar and 50MW of battery storage Email
The Whitelee wind farm will be used together with solar and storage to power the 20MW electrolyser. Image: ScottishPower.
British energy company ScottishPower is targeting up to 40MW of solar as part of its Green Hydrogen for Scotland project.
The company has submitted a planning application for up to 40MW of solar, made up over 62,000 individual solar cells, and up to 50MW of battery energy storage, which would be located on a site 5km west of Lochgoin Reservoir, just outside of Glasgow in Scotland, and adjacent to the existing Whitelee Extension substation.
Image: ScottishPower.
There are numerous benefits from collocating battery energy storage with wind power, including grid availability and planning ease.
Speaking at Solar Media’s Energy Storage Summit 2021, Tony Gannon, head of project management at ScottishPower Renewables explained how the company had chosen to take advantage of a number of these efficiencies for its 539MW Whitelee Wind Farm.
Whitelee is a 50MW/50MWh storage project, which is collocating liquid cooled lithium-ion batteries with the UK’s largest onshore windfarm near Glasgow, Scotland. Plans for the battery were approved by the Scottish government in June 2019, and inverter maker Ingeteam was announced as the power electronics technology provider in July 2020, while the batteries used are lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry cells from Chinese manufacturer CATL.
Statkraft s Kilathmoy battery won contracts for the current DS3 framework. Image: Statkraft.
With the current tariff framework for energy storage in Ireland set to come to an end in April 2023, there is scepticism over the support that will follow.
Given the onerous number of checks needed to bring in a replacement framework, and lessons learnt from the current “Delivering a Secure, Sustainable Electricity System” (DS3) framework, it is unlikely to be ready in the next two years suggested Bernice Doyle, head of Grid Services at Statkraft Ireland.
If a high level decision about the direction of DS3 is made this year, it could be running by 2024 she continued, speaking in the Ireland panel during Solar Media’s Energy Storage Summit 2021.