RWE has started the construction of its first large-scale storage facility in the Netherlands.
At RWE’s Eemshaven power plant, 110 cabinets with lithium-ion batteries are to be installed on an area of around 3,000 square metres, with a total installed capacity of 35MW and a storage capacity of 41MWh.
The storage system is to provide balancing energy from 2025 and will also be used on the wholesale market.
The battery project is an important step towards a portfolio of innovative turbines that integrate the weather-related fluctuating generation profile of RWE’s offshore wind farm OranjeWind, which is still under development, into the Dutch energy system in the best possible way.
In 2022, RWE secured the implementation of the offshore project off the Dutch coast with a system integration concept that combines the wind farm with electrolysers for the production of green hydrogen and other solutions, such as battery storage.
Roger Miesen, chief executive of RWE Generation SE and country chair for the Netherlands, said: “I am very proud of this start of construction.
“RWE’s first large-scale storage facility in the Netherlands marks a milestone on the way to a reliable power supply in an increasingly green energy system.
“With this project, we are actively contributing to stabilising the Dutch power grid.”
The plant will be networked with other RWE power plants in the Netherlands across all technologies.
In this way, it is possible to control whether the storage units provide balancing energy individually or in conjunction with other power plants, RWE said.
The battery storage system optimises the use of RWE’s Dutch power plant fleet across all technologies, it added.