United Kingdom – A 50 MW/100 MWh energy storage system will be delivered by Wärtsilä in Salisbury, Wiltshire, in collaboration with the low-carbon energy provider SSE.
The new solar and battery division of SSE will connect the battery, which will support access to clean, dependable energy by balancing the intermittent nature of renewables, for the first time directly to the transmission network. The system is anticipated to go into operation in September 2023, and the order was booked to Wärtsilä’s order intake in April 2022.
The partnership represents a significant development on the UK’s road to net zero. The UK will be able to scale up energy storage to meet its ambitious renewable energy targets thanks to this SSE project, which is also the first grid-scale battery project ever developed.
UK’s energy storage
In order to balance the production of renewable energy throughout the day, the energy storage system will provide the UK’s national grid with dependable services like wholesale market trading. Energy flexibility is becoming increasingly important as the UK scales up its renewable capacity, as evidenced by the UK’s energy storage pipeline, which has doubled over the past year. Wärtsilä is enabling more British energy consumers to access secure renewable energy, reducing costs while lowering carbon emissions, by assisting SSE to scale up its significant ambition in energy storage systems.
In order to support more renewable energy and assist the UK in achieving its net zero goals, Wärtsilä is currently installing energy storage systems of a similar size all over the UK. According to modeling from Wärtsilä, energy storage capacity will need to significantly increase to 18 GW by 2035 in order to manage the transition.
The GridSolv Quantum energy storage system from Wärtsilä, which is fully integrated, modular, and small, will be used in the project, along with its advanced energy management software, GEMS Digital Energy Platform.
