German battery manufacturer Tesvolt has delivered a 4 megawatt storage system to a solar plant in West Sussex, UK, BEST Battery Briefing’s own home county.
The solar facility is on a 35-hectare former landfill site in the village of Westhampnett. Power generated at the 7.4MW solar park is sold on the electricity wholesale market; the 4.4MW lithium-ion battery will generate additional income from price arbitrage, frequency services, and triad management, by which stored power will be retained and then sold during one of the three daily periods of peak demand.
West Sussex County Council leader Louise Goldsmith said: “As one of the first solar farms (in the UK) to be built with battery storage and free from government subsidy, we are blazing a trail among local authorities and demonstrating that councils have a role to play as local leaders on energy.”
Tesvolt account manager for the project, Christian Went, said: “A storage system with a service life of 30 calendar years, as ours has, is ideal to meet the requirements for a solution which serves taxpayers in the long term.”
Tesvolt produces commercial battery storage systems with prismatic lithium battery cells from Samsung SDI, based on nickel manganese cobalt oxide. All of their storage systems are produced at their German facility.
This announcement comes months after China’s BYD announced that it would supply a 25MW lithium-ion battery system to a local authority in the UK county of Somerset.
