RWE will build a battery storage facility at its biomass plant in Eemshaven, the Netherlands. The facility will have an installed power capacity of 35 megawatts (MW) and a storage capacity of 41 megawatt-hours (MWh).
A total of 110 lithium-ion battery racks are to be installed and the site covers an area of around 3000 square metres. RWE plans to invest approximately EUR 24 million.
The battery project is an important step towards a portfolio of innovative demand assets to optimally integrate the weather-related fluctuating power generation profile of the “OranjeWind” offshore wind farm into the Dutch energy system. In 2022, RWE had secured the implementation of the offshore project off the Dutch coast with a system integration concept that combines the wind farm with the generation of green hydrogen and other solutions such as battery storage.
‘With the increasing share of renewable energies in the electricity mix, the demand for flexible battery storage is also rising,’ says Roger Miesen, CEO RWE Generation and Country Chair for the Netherlands. ‘With this large-scale project, RWE is gaining experience in the marketing of energy storage systems on the Dutch energy markets and is actively contributing towards stabilising the Dutch electricity grid.’
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Balancing energy
The planned battery storage facility can operate at its installed capacity of 35 MW for over an hour. This is sufficient to charge around 800 electric vehicles (EVs). The system has been designed to be virtually coupled across technologies with RWE power plants in the Netherlands.
This enables optimal management of balancing energy, which can be supplied by selected units either individually or as a group. The battery storage system receives excess power from the electricity grid and feeds it back into the system when required, in order to maintain the required grid frequency.
3 GW of batteries by 2030
Battery storage systems are an essential part of the energy transition – they store the leftover electricity from surplus production and make it available again when needed.
RWE develops, builds and operates battery storage systems in Europe, Australia and the US. The company aims to build more than three gigawatts of batteries by 2030. As RWE has experience with battery storage systems, it is taking care of the detailed planning, modelling, system integration and commissioning of the projects.
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Battery storage projects underway
In Germany, RWE commissioned its mega battery in Lingen and Werne, with a total capacity of 117 MW, at the beginning of 2023. The company plans to virtually connect this battery storage system with its run-of-river power plants on the Moselle River.
A 220-MW battery storage system is currently under construction at RWE’s Neurath and Westfalen power plants. In March, the company acquired British developer JBM Solar, with an advanced development pipeline of 2.3 gigawatts of battery storage projects. At its German opencast mines, RWE is implementing innovative PV-storage plants.
Recently, RWE won an Australian tender for a long-term battery storage facility (50 MW/400 MWh).
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