Europe’s biggest battery energy storage system is online

Europe’s biggest battery energy storage system has been put into operation in the United Kingdom, near the world’s largest offshore wind farm, Dogger Bank, which is scheduled to start producing electricity in mid-2023.

The Pillswood project near Hull can store up to 196 MWh of electricity in a single cycle. It was developed by British-based renewable energy company Harmony Energy, which used Tesla’s two-hour Megapack system. It said the facility has the highest capacity in megawatt-hours.

The battery’s capacity is sufficient to power around 300,000 homes for two hours, Harmony Energy said.

The construction of the Pillswood project was managed by Tesla

The project will provide critical balancing services to the electricity grid in Great Britain. The system is located in the vicinity of the Creyke Beck substation, run by the National Grid, the island’s transmission system operator (TSO). It is the point where the world’s largest offshore wind farm, Dogger Bank, is planned to be connected.

The project will be implemented in phases. It is scheduled to go online in the summer of 2023.

According to Harmony Energy, the construction of the Pillswood project has been managed by Tesla. The project was originally intended to become operational over two phases, by December 2022 and March 2023, but the timetable was accelerated to enable both phases to energise this month, in time to support the National Grid in its efforts to provide stable and secure power to UK households over the challenging winter period, the company said.

The project will be operated through Autobidder, Tesla’s algorithmic trading platform, which has demonstrated a strong track record over the past two years in managing the Holes Bay and Contego projects – two existing battery storage projects also developed by Harmony Energy Limited in conjunction with FRV.

Kavanagh: The project is the first of six that the company intends to deliver in the coming year

Peter Kavanagh, Harmony Energy Director, said the Pillswood facility, the largest of its kind in Europe by energy capacity, is the first of six similar projects the company intends to deliver in the coming year.

“All stakeholders have recognised the importance of achieving energisation for this project ahead of winter, and we would like to thank Tesla, G2 Energy and Northern Powergrid for their efforts in delivering the project ahead of schedule despite a very challenging geopolitical and global supply chain environment,” he stated.

He added the said projects are not supported by taxpayer subsidies and that they would play a major role in contributing to the net zero transition.