Finland Hosting Largest Energy Storage Project in Nordics

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) - The largest storage energy facility in the Nordic countries is to be built in Helsinki, Finland.

Spearheaded by Helen Ltd. (Sähkötalo, Finland), formerly Helsingin Energia, the 2 million euro ($2.2 million) project will see the construction of a megawatt-scale electricity storage facility in Suvilahti, close to Helen's solar power plant - the largest of its kind in Finland. The facility will consist of about 15,000 lithium-ion battery cells, which can temporarily store the electricity generated by Helen's solar power plants in Suvilahti (340 kW) and in Kivikko, an 850kW project under construction. The rated power output of the electricity storage facility will be 1.2 megawatts (MW) and its energy capacity 600 kWh. The battery array will be assembled in Italy at the turn of the year, installed in March 2016 with commissioning scheduled for later that Spring.

Around a third of the funding will come from Finland's Ministry of Employment and the Economy and partners in the project include Helen Sähköverkko and the national transmission grid operator, Fingrid. The developers' believe that with the intermediate storage of electricity, supply and demand can be adjusted more flexibly, and the electricity storage facility will also stabilise the electricity grid.

"It will be the largest battery-operated electricity storage facility in the Nordic countries and a key pilot project," said Juha Karppinen of Helen. "The project's greatest innovation is in the way the facility will be operated and controlled. We will study and test when it is worth charging and discharging the battery and who is prepared to pay for it at any given time."

The battery technology will be delivered by Landis+Gyr in partnership with Toshiba.

"Energy storage will play a key role in the implementation of smart grids," commented Ari Tolonen of Landis+Gyr. "Together with Toshiba, we will deliver the latest battery technology, which will advance the entire energy sector, not only in Finland but also on the international scale."

Energy storage for renewable energy projects is still in its infancy. Last year, Industrial Info reported on Ireland becoming the latest country to join the race for testing electricity storage solutions for windfarms. Mainstream Renewable Power Limited (Dublin, Irelandis conducting a study to assess the commercial viability of attaching a large-scale storage device - such as a battery - to an operating windfarm in Ireland. For additional information, see August 13, 2014, article - Ireland Testing Large Scale Batteries for Wind Energy.

A recent 30 million euro ($32 million) energy storage pilot project at a 2.5 MW rooftop solar scheme in Nice, France, concluded that it is still too expensive for wide scale implementation.

Run by the power grid division of France's Electricite de France (EPA:EDF) (EDF) (Paris), the project involved the deployment of 2.7 MW hour-worth of lithium-ion batteries at three locations on the electricity distribution network. Although the technology worked very well, ERDF chief executive Philippe Monloubou told Reuters: "The economic model of the batteries is not mature yet."

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