The final 5MW of a 30MW virtual power plant battery storage project has been commissioned in the UK by distributed energy software firm Kiwi Power.
The Fideoak Mill site in Somerset county includes 22 units designed to help distributed network operator Western Power Distribution improve grid resilience and support increasing renewables penetration in the power mix.
The lithium-ion batteries have been supplied by China battery-maker BYD.
The project is UK’s largest council-owned battery storage site.
Kiwi Power installed its demand response hardware on all 22 battery units to enable the site to provide grid balancing services to grid operator National Grid.
Western Power Distribution requires the site be able to respond to constraint signals in the event of a transmission level issue on the grid and the site’s infrastructure was configured to accommodate this.
Kiwi Power will now use co-optimisation— which includes deep industry expertise with an algorithm that makes up to 17,500 decisions per asset per year— to maximise the council’s return on investment.