Battery Energy Storage Systems Facts
The claims of the developers and renewable lobby is that storage will help to make intermittent renewables work. By coincidence Timera have just published this update, which reveals it is nothing
Battery Energy Storage Systems
From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t idau
There has been discussion of solar farm projects which include battery storage. (Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS).
The claims of the developers and renewable lobby is that storage will help to make intermittent renewables work.
By coincidence Timera have just published this update, which reveals it is nothing more than a money making ploy:
Impact of new balancing platform on GB BESS
Batteries create value from harvesting price volatility. The real time Balancing Mechanism (BM) has the most volatile prices in the GB market, yet battery (BESS) assets have captured limited BM value to date.
BESS BM value capture has historically been impacted by:
Manual dispatch of flexible assets by the System Operator (ESO), disadvantaging smaller asset dispatch
The 15 min rule where BESS bid offer acceptances are effectively limited to 15 mins of duration (given issues with the ESO’s visibility as to state of charge)
Skip rates where the ESO has consistently chosen higher priced assets over BESS in the BM (reflecting issues 1. & 2. above, but also real constraints that the ESO faces in managing the system e.g. locational requirements to use thermal assets).
There has been significant progress in 2024 in addressing these factors with the introduction of the ESO’s new Open Balancing Platform and a relaxation of the 15 min rule.
In today’s article we look at the impact of these changes on BESS asset dispatch in the BM.
The rest is technical, but the key is this opening sentence:
Batteries create value from harvesting price volatility
As Timera note, the Balancing Mechanism (BM) has the most volatile prices in the GB market. This is because of the inherent unreliability of wind and solar power. When supplies are short, the Grid is forced to step in and buy up short term power supplies wherever it can get it.
Prices can obviously go sky high, and it is trading at these times where the battery storage operators can make a handsome return. These costs of course end up being added to consumer bills.
In short, solar/battery farms can make large profits from the very intermittency which they create.
None of these battery storage systems will solve the problem of how to store solar power in summer for use in winter, when generation falls to about 3% of capacity. Instead they are designed to store power during the day, to use at night.
The giant Project Fortress solar/BESS farm in Kent, mentioned by Ray Sanders, is rated at 373 MW, with 700 MWh of battery storage. That’s less than two hours’ worth.