Abu Dhabi-based green energy firm Masdar has signed an agreement to work with Norwegian multinational oil and gas company Statoil on expanding the development of energy storage systems for business and other applications.
Masdar said the companies are analysing data from the “Batwind” integrated energy storage system the firms launched last year to store energy generated by Hywind Scotland— the pilot commercial-scale floating wind farm offshore Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Under the terms of the agreement, the firms said they will purchase, test and install Batwind “to investigate how the battery storage solution can be leveraged to improve the operational and cost efficiency of offshore wind farms”.
The battery will be located at the onshore substation of Hywind Scotland and connected to the offshore wind farm at the grid entry point.
Masdar said on 17 January: “Being able to study Batwind’s performance under a range of conditions will generate a high level of operational data, which will in turn enable a thorough exploration of the potential integration of battery storage solutions with wind and solar power generation systems, and offer insight into the potential application of this technology in other locations.”
Masdar holds a 25% stake in the Hywind project with Statoil, which owns the remaining 75%. Operating with an installed capacity of 30MW, Hywind Scotland is already powering approximately 6,600 homes and displacing 63,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually, Masdar said.
