Harmony Energy and FRV's previous storage site, Holes Bay. Image: Harmony Energy.
Fotowatio Renewable Ventures (FRV) has unveiled its second utility-scale battery project with Harmony Energy, having closed funding and construction contracts.
The duo are collaborating on the 34MW/68MWh Contego project, which is made up of a system of 28 Tesla Megapack lithium-ion batteries and uses Tesla’s Autobidder AI software for real-time trading and control.
Work on the project is set to start this month near Burgess Hill in West Sussex, with the site expected to be completed in 2021, making the project one of the largest battery energy storage plants in the UK.
It comes as part of a strategic energy storage pipeline that is set to be launched globally, with the two companies having already worked together on the Holes Bay battery storage project. This also utilises Tesla Megapack batteries, although this one consists of six of the batteries, with a total capacity of 7.5MW/15MWh.
Holes Bay has been operating since June 2020, and has participated in the EPEX spot market, Firm Frequency Response (FFR) and the Balancing Mechanism (BM), being the first site to go live in National Grid ESO’s new wider access application programming interface for the BM.
The interface went live in September, with the intention to open up the market for non-traditional participants to join through what National Grid ESO has lauded as a more simple, cost-effective and web based route.
Peter Kavanagh, CEO of Harmony Energy, said closing the funding and construction contracts for Contego and completing Holes Bay were "exciting developments" especially when considering "the added challenges of developing these projects during the current pandemic".
"There is real momentum in the development of subsidy-free, utility scale battery storage in the UK as we continue the shift towards a greener economy. The value of battery storage in providing flexibility to the grid continues to increase as the UK’s penetration of renewable energy grows.”
Harmony Energy has over 500MW of construction-ready battery storage plants in the UK, and recently made its UK solar debut with a 30MW array in Yorkshire.