New Siemens UK partnership to build 22MW battery portfolio and launch ‘storage as a service’ offer
Siemens has continued to bolster its UK presence with a new partnership with Grid Battery Storage Limited (GBSL) which will see a 22MW portfolio of four projects built and an ‘energy storage as a service’ offering launched.
The first of the energy storage projects will see a 6MW/6MWh battery built at Dorking in the south of England, with design of the project already underway ahead of a completion date in summer 2018.
It will be used to bid into the grid-balancing firm frequency response (FFR) market, depending on what is in place following the implementation of new services by transmission system operator (TSO) National Grid, and will be followed by the remaining three projects by early 2019.
Andrew Blumfield from GBSL said: “We are delighted to have reached this agreement with Siemens which builds on a track record of a successful commercial partnership. The four new battery energy storage projects will support National Grid and ensure energy storage projects can continue to provide cost effective solutions to modern challenges.”
In addition to these projects, which will use Siemens’ SieStorage lithium-ion batteries, GBSL will also target the commercial and industrial (C&I) energy storage sector with its ‘energy storage as a service’ offering.
James McKellar, director and one of the two founding shareholders of GBSL, explained to our sister site Clean Energy News that the offer, which will seek to deploy behind the meter batteries ranging from 3MW up to 50MW, will be delivered in a way to suit potential clients.
“Some [people] may have explored the possibility of buying this equipment themselves but found that the payback is quite long, so the logic is very good,” he said.
“Energy storage as a service means that for the right client we will install the equipment without them putting up any upfront payment so they buy the service from us on a formulated basis. We install it and they pay us a service contract over time which [meets] the cost of the equipment and the equity return.”
He added that the business model would see the battery used for peak shifting during periods of highest energy prices (between 4-7pm) as well as providing some backup power and voltage control.
GBSL will then use the individual or combined capacity of the batteries at times when the install is not required to meet the clients’ needs to bid into ancillary services contracts. McKellar explained that this would effectively subsidise the payments made by the clients.
