GE Renewable Energy has secured an agreement to deliver a 25MW energy storage system to be integrated with solar at a renewable energy park in the UK.
Wykes, the developer, chose GE to supply the system for its Chelveston Renewable Energy Park, which operates with 60MW of solar and 26MW of wind.
The wind farm features GE’s 2.85MW onshore wind turbines. Wykes will use GE’s Reservoir energy storage technology to add another 60MW of solar capacity to the facility.
The DC-coupled system will enable the PV array and batteries to share a common set of power conversion equipment, enhancing the overall energy output of the solar-storage hybrid system.
The configuration will optimise costs and increase the overall system reliability and flexibility, GE said. Chelveston represents the UK’s first DC-coupled solar-storage plant in the UK.
Wykes engineering manager Scott Coleman said: “As part of our ongoing relationship with GE Renewable Energy, we selected their power storage system as it was flexible, scalable and allowed us to perform a range of tasks enabling us to provide resilient services, not only to the National Grid ESO, but to our private energy consumers within our expanding on-site Grid.”
GE Renewable Energy renewable hybrids CEO Prakash Chandra added: “The world is increasingly moving to generate more dispatchable renewables using Hybrid solutions – combining the power of standalone technologies like wind and solar with storage through controls and software, and, this project is a further demonstration of GE’s capabilities in this space.
“We are proud to have been selected by Wykes to deliver this flagship project in the UK and for the opportunity to deliver on this challenging solution.”