ALMERE, THE NETHERLANDS – Alfen B.V. and C-Wind realized the first project in the Netherlands that combines wind energy with an energy storage system. The storage system is located at wind farm Giessenwind, next to highway A15 at Giessenburg.
Grid stability
Giessenwind is one of the highest wind farms in the Netherlands. The three turbines have a height of 108 meters and jointly provide about 5,000 households with energy. The intermittent character of renewable energy sources such as wind increasingly requires new measures to stabilize the grid.
C-Wind is a consortium of Scholt Energy Services and wind farm Giessenwind. Wim Meerkerk, owner of Giessenwind: “Battery storage systems are necessary to integrate our ambitions with renewable energy in the Dutch electricity grid.”
End-to-end solution
Alfen, a provider of a large range of products and services for the electricity grid, has delivered an end-to-end solution for this project, including the energy storage system of approximately 1 MWh, a transformer substation and the grid connection. Andreas Plenk, responsible for global sales of energy storage systems at Alfen: “Building on Alfen’s eighty-year experience at the high voltage we can deliver a turnkey end-to-end solution for our customers. Currently we are working on various projects that connect our energy storage system, called TheBattery, directly to renewable energy sources. TheBattery balances energy supply and demand and as such prevents significant grid infrastructure investments. The pressure on the grid is reduced, and at the same time, the generated energy can be sold at the most profitable moments.”
