Switzerland’s largest battery storage system has gone into action stabilising the electricity network for transmission grid operator Swissgrid, asset operator Alpiq has said.
Switzerland-headquartered developer MW Storage contracted Alpiq to manage and operate the 20MW / 18MWh containerised battery energy storage solution in the resort town of Brunnen, in the Swiss municipality of Ingenbohl.
According to MW Storage, the project is a “purely privately financed initiative,” and has been “implemented without public assistance and free of subsidies”. A Swiss investment foundation and two local banks financed the project, which is MW Storage’s first “megabattery”.
The containerised lithium-ion battery storage was supplied by MW Storage’s technology partner, Fluence. The system has already pre-qualified in late September to provide secondary control frequency reserve services to Swissgrid and as it also sits in Alpiq’s wider portfolio alongside the company’s hydropower systems, can provide primary control services too, which Alpiq is applying for.
According to Swissgrid guidelines, secondary control power helps maintain supply and demand of energy within a control area to keep the grid operating at its required frequency of 50Hz. Power stations providing this service must be ready to be called upon by the central grid controller, in this case Swissgrid.
Secondary control is activated within a “few seconds” of receiving a signal from the grid and is “typically completed after 15 minutes,” requiring fairly short durations of energy storage when provided by batteries and the Swiss market for this is limited to within the borders of Switzerland. Primary control meanwhile is called upon to balance frequency within half a minute of a signal, and Switzerland is part of the shared European market for frequency containment reserves (FCR) which includes this service along with grid operators in six other countries.
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