The Anonymous Widower

Boralex Commissions BESS At Wind Farm In France In EU-Supported Demonstration Project

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Energy Storage News.

These two paragraphs outline the project.

Canada-based renewable energy firm Boralex has turned on a 3.3MWh battery storage unit attached to a wind farm in France.

The battery storage project has been installed at the site of the Plouguin wind farm, an 8MW generating facility in the Finistere department of Brittany, northwest France.

Note.

1. The project was co-financed by the European Union through its European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
2. The project was launched to demonstrate the technical feasibility of a hybrid wind-plus-storage project.
3. Boralex added in its announcement that the project will contribute to the stability of the French electricity grid.

There will be a lot of projects like this in the future.

This paragraph makes an interesting point about using batteries with solar and wind power.

Wind farms are less frequently hybridised with energy storage than solar PV because of the larger minimum project size and less predictable variability, with sharper peaks meaning heavier battery cycling and potentially faster degradation.

My control engineering knowledge and experience says that larger power sources and those that are highly variable will need batteries with more capacity for the same stability and quality of power output.

This sounds to me like a very good reason for developing larger and more affordable batteries, like those of Cheesecake Energy, Energy Dome, Gravitricity and Highview Power.

It also probably means that to stabilise several gigawatts of wind power, you need a very large amount of storage, that can only be provided by pumped storage hydroelectricity.

Conclusion

A very large amount energy storage is going to be needed.

Projects like these are essential to make sure we use them to their full possibilities.

May 2, 2023 - Posted by AnonW | Energy, Energy Storage | Boralex, Cheesecake Energy, Control Engineering, Energy Dome, European Union, France, Gravitricity, Highview Power, Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity, Solar Power, Wind Power