Is intermittency a disadvantage of wind farms that we have to accept as it is? Not anymore. At Sorne Hill in Donegal, Ireland, Tapbury Management is developing a 39 MW wind farm with battery storage. Last month, it signed a $6.3 million deal with the Canadian company VRB Power Systems Inc. for the delivery of a 12 MWh flow battery.
A VRB flow battery stores and releases energy by the electrochemical reactions of a vanadium-based liquid as it passes through a membrane. When the liquid is pumped in one direction, the energy is discharged as electricity. When the direction of flow is reversed, the battery starts charging up.
Compared to other battery technologies on the market, it is a more environmentally friendly system and has the advantage that it does not degrade as a result of repeated deep discharging.
At the Sorne Hill wind farm, the battery will be used to store energy when supply is abundant and deliver it during peak demands when prices are high. It may also be used to sell spinning reserve (back-up power for the grid). The resulting revenues will be high enough to pay back the investment of the battery within a reasonable time.
This is one of the largest commercial deals ever for an energy storage technology at a wind farm. It could very well become a blueprint for the rest of the wind industry in Europe. The potential of this technology is particularly high in countries like Denmark and Germany where the high proportion of wind farms in the total capacity threatens to destabilize the national grids.
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