The Anonymous Widower

Shetland’s Viking Wind Farm

I was listening to SSE’s Chief Executive; Alistair Phillips-Davies, on the radio this morning, when he mentioned the Viking wind farm on Shetland.

• The wind farm is being developed by Viking Energy, a partnership between Shetland Islands Council and SSE plc.
• It will have 103 turbines and a nameplate capacity of 370 MW.
• Construction started in September 2020 and should be complete by 2024.
• The wind farm will be connected to the National grid via the Shetland HVDC Connection.
• There’s more on the Viking Energy web site.

Note.

1. According to Wikipedia, wind farms in the Shetlands can have capacity factors of over 50 %.
2. Viking Energy hope that the Viking wind farm will become one of the most productive onshore wind farms in the world.
3. Is it unusual, that the wind farm is developed by a partnership between a local authority and a large utility company?

It also appears that together the Viking wind farm and the Shetland HVDC Connection will allow the 66 MW diesel-powered Lerwick power station to be closed.

Does The Electricity System On Shetland Need Energy Storage?

As an Electrical Engineer, who specialised in Control Engineering, I am surprised that to ensure energy security, that there is no energy storage on Shetland.

In the Wikipedia entry for Lerwick power station, there is a section entitled Load Balancing, where this is said.

The growth of output from wind turbines in Shetland has increased instability in the local grid (which is not connected to the national grid on mainland Scotland). SSE installed a 1 MW sodium–sulfur battery in a nearby building to ameliorate the peak loads. However due to safety concerns, the sodium-sulfur battery was removed prior to commissioning and the energy storage building was reconfigured to accommodate 3MWh of advanced lead-acid batteries.

A combination of the new Shetland HVDC Connection and the lead-acid batteries must be enough to ensure energy security for the Shetlands.

March 21, 2022 - Posted by AnonW | Energy, Finance | Onshore Wind Power, Shetland, SSE, Wind Power