Belectric has recently commissioned three second-use large storage facilities in the U.K. and Germany. The plants, with a total capacity of more than 40 MW, will be used to provide grid services, such as primary control power, the Innogy unit announced on Monday.
The company said the projects were developed for “well-known customers” from the energy and automotive industries. Overall, thousands of new and used car batteries from different manufacturers have been installed for the large-scale storage projects.
“Battery modules from the automotive industry offer a number of advantages that make them very suitable for applications requiring high C-rates, a wide temperature range, or specific safety requirements,” explained Tim Müller, Chief Technology Officer at Belectric.
The latest project is a 22 MW battery storage system in Wales, which has been coupled with a wind farm. Vattenfall already announced the commissioning of this facility in May. The storage system, which relies on 500 BMW i3 batteries, will be used for frequency regulation by the National Grid. According to Belectric, the contract for the supply of grid services will have a duration of four years.
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Another battery storage system, with 14 MW of power, is located on the site of a large automobile plant in Germany. The system, which is using the same battery modules that power the electric and hybrid vehicles produced at this factory, will also supply power to the local network in the future, while also providing primary control power, Belectric said in its press release.
A third storage project totaling 7 MW is also located in Germany. The storage facility will expand the operating capacity of an existing pumped storage power plant and provide primary control energy to the European electricity grid, Belectric added.
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The MW of plants is interesting, but without the MWh, such stories don’t tell us much. Batteries store energy, and a 1MW plant could have anything from 0.25MWh to 6MWh. Kind of matters when you are talking about second life, because it is hard to believe that there is that much available from companies that have not been selling EV’s that long.