Vattenfall and the BMW Group have signed a contract for the delivery of up to 1,000 lithium-ion batteries this year, each of which can store 33kWh.

The largest installation – pending on a final investment decision – will be at Vattenfall’s Pen y Cymoedd wind farm (230MW) in South Wales. This 22MW battery will supply frequency response in National Grid’s so-called EFR (Enhanced Frequency Response) service.
Elsewhere in Europe the first installation will be at the 122MW Princess Alexia onshore wind farm near Amsterdam. The 3.2MW battery is Vattenfall’s first large storage project in the Netherlands.
Another site will be part of the “Norddeutsche Energiewende NEW 4.0″ project where  a large battery store will be built alongside a planned wind farm in Hamburg-Bergedorf.

Vattenfall will purchase the new batteries from the BMW plant in Dingolfing and use them in all storage projects. “Energy storage and grid stability are the major topics of the new energy world”, said Gunnar Groebler, senior vice president at Vattenfall and head of its wind business area. “The decoupling of production and consumption and the coupling of different consumption sectors are in the focus of our work.”

BMW “meets our high safety requirements with the use of the batteries with reliably good quality from German series production”, said Daniel Hustadt, project manager for large batteries at Vattenfall Innovation.

Other possible applications include electricity storage in private households.