Equinor has Installed Batwind - the World’s First Battery for Offshore Wind
Wednesday 27 June 2018
Equinor has installed Batwind - the world’s first battery for offshore wind. With Batwind in operation, it will for the first time be possible to store energy produced from an offshore wind farm.
The battery storage solution was presented in Peterhead, Scotland by Batwind partners Equinor and Masdar. Electricity produced at the world’s first floating offshore wind farm Hywind Scotland, located 25 kilometers off the coast of Peterhead, will be transported via cables to an onshore substation where the 1MW batteries are placed and connected to the grid. The battery capacity is the equivalent of more than 128,000 iPhones.
As the wind is not always blowing energy storage technologies like batteries and other ways of storing electricity, is expected to become increasingly important to secure grid stability.
According to a recent report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the installed costs of battery storage systems could fall by two-thirds (66%) by 2030.
The Batwind storage solution works, in many respects, like an energy warehouse. Equinor and Masdar will test where to build the warehouse; how big it should be and how to run the logistics.
The brainwork is in the algorithms, which Equinor and Masdar are developing, based on multiple data sources including weather forecasts, market prices, maintenance schedules, consumption patterns and grid services.
Batwind is fully financed by Hywind Scotland partners, Equinor and Masdar and is a first step towards a scalable, global renewables energy storage system.