A 300MW/600MWh battery energy storage system (BESS), located next to Ørsted’s Hornsea 3 Offshore Wind Farm onshore substation, is expected to come online in 2026.
The BESS, called the Boudica project, will be owned by Ørsted ICENI Energy Storage UK, the storage-focused arm of the Danish energy company and developer. It is a new project because the storage system will be co-located with an onshore substation, which will share a connection with an offshore wind power plant. The BESS site and substation are located near Norwich in Norfolk.
Ørsted currently operates more than 5 GW of offshore wind capacity and has a further 5 GW under construction or development in Great Britain, including the Hoornzee 3 and Hornsea 4 projects. During this year’s Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction round, Hornsea 3 bid again and was awarded a 1,080 MW contract. Ørsted claims that Hornsea 3, with a capacity of 2,400 MW, is the largest wind power plant in the world.
The co-located BESS development is the result of three years of collaboration between Ørsted, NESO and National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET), and was designated a Pathfinder project by the UK government’s Offshore Transmission Network Review (OTNR). OTNR aimed to improve coordination between projects to integrate increasing amounts of renewable energy onto the grid.
After going through the Pathfinder process, the Boudica BESS is expected to come online in 2026.
Bridgit Hartland-Johnson, principal systems integration specialist at Ørsted, called the project a “blueprint for the future,” noting that similar projects are in the pipeline “demonstrating that it is a best-in-class solution.”
John Twomey, director of customer connections at National Grid Electricity Transmission, said: “Co-locating assets in this way can help maximize the benefits of new planning for renewable energy generation to connect to the electricity grid, allowing excess wind energy to be stored and used when necessary.”
Sharing and reusing infrastructure reduces capital and operational costs, and combining assets in one location can create value-added systems. Integrated wind and solar energy locations provide a more stable and manageable power output.
Research by consultancy Cornwall Insight has also found the benefits of using a single connection point for multiple assets: hybrid energy hubs (HEHs), where different types of renewable energy generation are co-located and share a single grid connection, can accelerate the connection of renewable energy generation, reduce the level of investment required and reduce the amount of land required for network infrastructure, such as substations and transformers.
This article originally appeared on our sister site, Current±.
