A storage plant featuring BMW car batteries is to be built at Swedish utility firm Vattenfall’s largest land-based wind farm, in Pen y Cymoedd, South Wales, UK.
The site’s 76 wind power turbines are now running at full capacity and it is expected they will generate about 700 GWh annually – enough to provide electricity to about 188,000 homes.
Work on the storage plant is expected to start later this summer with the six shipping container sized units being operational by February 2018.
In March, Vattenfall and the BMW Group signed an agreement for the supply of up to 1,000 lithium-ion batteries this year to energy storage projects in Amsterdam and Wales. The batteries, which have a capacity of 33 kWh each, are equipped with a BMW-owned battery control system and are also used by the car manufacturer in its BMW i3 vehicles.
“Energy storage and grid stability are the most important issues in the new energy world,” Gunnar Groebler, head of Vattenfall Wind, said. “We want to use the plants where we generate renewable energy from renewable energy sources to drive the transition to a new energy system, and to facilitate the integration of renewable energy sources in energy systems with storage capabilities.”