Energy transformation in Northern Germany making further progress
Michael Westhagemann, the Senator for Economics, Transport and Innovation of the City of Hamburg, today officially commissioned the storage power plant at the Curslack wind farm in Hamburg-Bergedorf. At the core of the system is a system linking the five wind turbines operated at the wind farm with a new battery storage facility, which is connected directly to the wind farm grid. Built by Vattenfall in conjunction with the Competence Center for Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency (CC4E) of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW) and the Nordex Group, the lithium-ion battery storage facility can collect electricity from the adjacent CC4E wind farm and thus increase its efficiency.
The purpose of the storage power plant, which was built as part of the major NEW 4.0 – “Norddeutsche EnergieWende” energy transformation project for northern Germany, is to enable practical research to be conducted into the possibilities for the system integration of renewable energies. By coupling the wind farm and battery storage, the supply of electricity from the wind farm can be optimised and adapted to meet customers’ needs. In this way, it will be possible to avoid shutting down wind turbines in the event of a grid overload as far as possible.
In addition, Vattenfall, Nordex and CC4E want to jointly design models for innovative system services. Control algorithms and parameters, e.g. for the local provision of reactive power or instantaneous reserves, are to be developed and tested so that providers of renewable energies can offer these services together with battery storage systems on a market-oriented basis.
The storage power plant consists of 24 batteries featuring the latest BMW technology. These are the same batteries that are also used in electric vehicles. The battery storage unit has an output of 720 kW and a storage capacity of 792 kilowatt hours (kWh).
