Largest battery energy storage projects in Northern Ireland

In 2019, Statkraft developed and built County Kerry’s first large scale storage battery (11MW) and is currently working on a second larger project of 26MW nearby. This newest deal becomes the largest of its kind in the region, covering two 50MW projects. It comes on the heels of Statkraft’s recent announcements of an additional 68MW of market-access agreements in the Republic of Ireland, further strengthening the company’s position as a leading provider of grid-services and route-to-market offerings within Ireland and the UK.

Statkraft will help manage the projects in the integrated single electricity market and maximise the value achieved from the battery storage projects across a range of services.

The Gore Street battery energy storage projects will provide rapid frequency response and reserves to the national electricity grid within milli-seconds in the event of a sudden drop-off in generation or supply, as well as the ability to trade in the wholesale energy markets, using Statkraft’s automated trading platform, UNITY.

The sites located near Drumkee, County Tyrone and Mullavilly, County Armagh, will be critical in supporting Northern Ireland’s transition to a low-carbon electricity system. This fast-responding, low-carbon flexibility will directly help maintain system stability by rapid power injection or absorption while accommodating greater levels of renewable energy.

Nick Heyward, Head of Energy Storage, for Statkraft said: “Batteries provide the key to managing grid stability. We are very pleased to be working with Gore Street to optimise and manage these important storage assets in the market, which will provide a key source of low-carbon flexibility in the Northern Irish electricity system. The projects will add significantly to our growing portfolio of flexible assets across both Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is expected to surpass 200MW this year.

Critical to the success of our optimisation of flexible assets has been the ongoing development of our UNITY Virtual Power Plant platform. Through a combination of advanced algorithmic trading, with 24/7 expert ‘human’ trader supervision, UNITY ensures the storage flexibility is deployed and traded into the right markets at the right time. This not only helps ensure the best value from storage assets today but also helps reduce risk and mitigate the impacts of any future changes in DS3 services in the future.”

Gore Street’s sites join around 500MW of third-party distributed flexible generation and battery storage capacity which Statkraft already optimises, alongside nearly 4000 MW of pre-dominantly third-party renewables generation across Ireland and the UK. Statkraft’s fully-automated trading platform, UNITY, integrates intermittent renewable generation and flexible assets in order to support customers, System Operators and the whole market to help accelerate the transition to a sustainable, zero-carbon future system.

Alex O'Cinneide, CEO of Gore Street Capital, investment manager of Gore Street Energy Storage Fund, commented:

“We are delighted to have partnered with Statkraft on this important project. As the largest energy storage assets in Northern Ireland we believe Gore Street’s Drumkee and Mullavilly assets have a major role to play in securing the transformation of the Irish electricity market to one that is able to depend on much larger loads of intermittent sources of renewable generation, such as wind, effectively. Assets such as these will be significant ensuring the energy security of this market going forward and Gore Street is proud to be playing an active role in this transformation.”