This week, an energy storage developer located in the US acquired a collection of 8 wind farms in North Texas. The decision is a hint of the increasing confidence and status of the storage industry too.
Earlier, GlidePath Energy (the firm in question) majorly designed separate storage projects. It has also worked to generation projects to help with storage bolt-ons. The company has purchased 149MW of functional wind farms in North Texas. The state presently sells their power into the SPP (Southwest Power Pool). The firm claims that its operations team will initially alter the wind farms prior to takes “a unique chance to enhance the performance of the wind farms via the inclusion of battery storage”. The firm has already begun brainstorming in Texas on a merchant storage project.
A smaller battery launch with a smaller duration might be employed to control the energy sent to the grid from the sites. A more ambitious method might be a bigger system capable of shifting or at least stretching the power created into times of day with additional demand.
“We think there is an opportunity to add storage plants in the portfolio. There is a huge potential for storage to enhance the economics of wind farms and lower transmission congestion in SPP.”
On a related note, it is no secret that Scotland has a number of wind farms, but it is now apparent just how much electricity those farms can generate. Data from the media displays that wind turbines in Scotland created just more than 9.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity from January to June this year, or sufficient energy to power almost 4.47 million houses. This number is almost 2 times the houses present in Scotland. The operators supposedly have sufficient wind energy to fuel a huge part of northern England.
