Norwegian energy firm Equinor is preparing to launch a pilot project for the trading of electricity using batteries alongside oil and gas.
An Equinor spokesperson told BEST Battery Briefing work had begun on creating a bespoke trading system at the company’s offices in London— where it has traded its oil and gas reserves since 1983.
“We are starting up to test a business model for this trading element this autumn,” the spokesperson for the former Statoil company said.
Details of how the project is expected to work are expected to be available within the coming weeks. However, a senior executive at Equinor, Stephen Bull, told The Daily Telegraph in the UK the company expects to begin trials in the autumn of the “complicated algorithms” that could unlock the power market’s biggest change since renewables became a major force.
Bull said Equinor’s shift from European oil major to renewable power trader would start in the UK “because Britain is at the forefront of energy grid innovation”. He said: “There’s a clear direction of travel here, which is important because we think in terms of decades.”
“All renewable energy developers will need to have this capability,” Bull said. “They will either need to buy it, or develop it. We’d rather build our own system in-house.”
Last month, Equinor and Abu-Dhabi-based Masdar unveiled a Younicos battery system (pictured) in Scotland as the “world’s first” to be connected to an offshore floating wind farm.
The one-megawatt system, comprising two Younicos lithium-ion Y Cubes in modular battery containers, has been installed at the Hywind onshore substation in Peterhead.
