Statkraft will provide market access and optimisation services for 100MW of battery energy storage projects in Northern Ireland on behalf of Gore Street Energy Storage Fund.
This deal, covering two 50MW projects with Gore Street, follows Statkraft’s recent announcements of an additional 68MW of market-access agreements in the Republic of Ireland.
The grid batteries are located near Drumkee, County Tyrone and in Mullavilly, County Armagh.
Statkraft previously developed and built the first large scale storage battery (11MW) in County Kerry, Ireland in 2019 and is currently commissioning a second larger project (26MW) nearby.
The two 50MW projects were developed jointly by Gore Street and investment and asset-management company Low Carbon.
Both were energised on schedule in December.
Statkraft will provide overall market access and trading optimisation services for the assets, helping to manage the projects in the integrated single electricity market and “maximise the value” achieved from the battery storage projects across various services.
The assets will provide rapid frequency response and reserves to the grid under the System Operator for Northern Ireland (SONI) and EirGrid’s DS3 System Services programme.
They will also trade in the wholesale energy markets, using Statkraft’s automated trading platform, UNITY.
Statkraft energy storage head Nick Heyward said: “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.”
Gore Street’s sites join around 500MW of third-party distributed flexible generation and battery storage capacity which Statkraft already optimises alongside nearly 4000MW 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.