The corporate head office of Gas Natural Fenosa in Barcelona. (Credit: Gas Natural Fenosa)
Gas Natural Fenosa, a Spanish natural gas utilities company, and Toshiba, a Japanese multinational engineering and electronics corporation, announced yesterday that they will carry out collaborative on-site verification testing program of the transportable lithium-ion Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) manufactured by Toshiba.
The question of storing surplus electrical power during the times when its production exceeds its consumption was always essential to ensure the efficient and economical operation of the power generation facilities. However, the power output of the fuel-based power plants (i.e. coal, natural gas or oil) can be adjusted with relative ease. Now, when more and more renewable energy sources are being connected to the electrical grid, our ability to store energy efficiently and reliably becomes truly crucial.
The goal of BESS is to provide a solution for the achievement of an efficient, reliable and stable distribution network. The demonstration program was launched in Dec. 2013 and will run for five years. It is supported by Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development organization (NEDO), under its program for “Development of Large Scale Energy Storage System with High Safety and Cost Competitiveness.”
The demonstration will initially be located at the Alcalá de Henares distribution substation in the suburbs of Madrid, but it is planned to carry out demonstrations at several sites during the program lifetime to fully assess the various case studies. The scope of the testing program will include the evaluation of the BESS’s effectiveness in contributing to peak shaving and the ability of the transportable BESS to manage the electric supply at specific sites with seasonal or temporary high electricity demand. In addition, management of power and voltage fluctuations caused by renewable energy sources will be evaluated. The demonstration equipment consists in a transportable BESS with 500 kW output and 776 kW·h capacity.
Through the demonstration program, Gas Natural Fenosa and Toshiba aim to demonstrate the distributed BESS solutions that will contribute to the establishment of highly reliable metropolitan distribution networks that can ensure stable electric power supply for those with large amounts of renewable energy sources and also provide continuous power supply solutions in metropolitan areas in the event of an emergency situation.
