Harmony Energy is collaborating with Fotowatio Renewable Ventures to develop a 34MW/68MWh battery project consisting of Tesla Megapack batteries. It’s the duo’s second collaborative utility-scale project in the UK and will be the country’s largest battery energy storage plant.
The first project they collaborated on was the Holes Bay battery storage project. It consists of six Tesla Megapack batteries, amounting to a total capacity of 7.5 MW/15 MWh. It has been operating since June 2020. Tesla was granted a license to generate clean electricity in the UK earlier this year.
The Contego project, as the new one is called, is almost five times bigger with a total capacity of 34MW/68MWh. It consists of 28 lithium-ion batteries and uses Tesla’s Autobidder AI software for real-time control and trading. Construction will begin this month near Burgess Hill in West Sussex and is scheduled for completion in 2021. The two companies plan to launch more such projects globally.
The Holes Bay plant has participated in the Firm Frequency Response, the EPEX spot market, and the Balancing Mechanism (BM). It was the first site to go live in National Grid ESO’s more comprehensive access application programming interface for the BM. The interface began in September to open up the market for non-traditional participants to join. National Grid ESO says it’s a more cost-effective and more straightforward web-based route.
CEO of Harmony Energy, Peter Kavanagh, said:
Closing the funding and construction contracts for Contego and completing Holes Bay were exciting developments, especially when considering the added challenges of developing these projects during the current pandemic.
There is real momentum in the development of subsidy-free, utility-scale battery storage in the UK as we continue the shift towards a greener economy. The value of battery storage in providing flexibility to the grid continues to increase as the UK’s penetration of renewable energy grows.
Harmony Energy is no new player to the game. The company has more than 500MW of construction-ready battery storage plants in the UK already. However, it is relatively new to the UK solar sector, having just recently made its solar debut in the country with a 30MW array in Yorkshire.
