Adding energy storage to renewable energy installations such as solar plants or wind turbines, is becoming more interesting every day. On this context, DNV GL participated in the WindStock project for Topsector Energie, that focused on feasibility of combining wind, solar and storage.
For instance, in the Netherlands, DNV GL has found that a positive business case is possible for agricultural cases, where energy storage would be added to existing wind turbines expanded with rooftop or field solar. Return on investment is achieved within 7 to 9 years.
The positive business case is achieved with revenue stacking: grid connections costs are reduced, participation in grid balancing markets or frequency regulation and optimizing the self-consumption of the renewable energy output.
DNV GL participated in the project together with Greenchoice, Windunie and EnergyStorageNL. In the project three scenarios were examined:
- wind & storage
- storage in isolation
- wind & solar & storage
Conclusions
- An interesting result was that, when determining an optimal configuration of wind, solar and energy storage, the grid connection at the site does not have to be expanded. Also, the storage system’s charging profile can be optimized by drawing upon both renewable energy sources.
- Another benefit of a well configured wind, solar and storage system is the possibility to participate in the imbalance and/or frequency containment reserve (FCR) markets. As an important side note, with a relatively small European FCR market volume, there is a risk of price decline due to increasing amount of supply of reserve power. A strategy is advised where both FCR and potentially the imbalance market are targeted.
- To unlock all benefits of wind & solar & storage, it is essential to use an intelligent control system and operation algorithm so that storage performance can be optimized to obtain maximum yield of the various revenue streams.
The WindStock consortium is currently considering the actual implementation of the viable options of energy storage linked to wind power generation.
