Swedish power company Vattenfall has announced it will build a new hybrid energy park in Netherlands consisting of wind, solar, and battery storage, and with a total capacity of 60MW.
As renewable energy and battery storage technologies grow in their development cycles and decrease in price, developers have begun to explore ways in which these technologies can work together.
The Vattenfall project will be built at the Haringvliet inlet in the Netherlands and will include a 22MW wind park with 6 turbines, a 38MW solar farm boasting 124,000 solar panels, and a battery storage component with 12MWh of storage.
Australia’s Windlab has built the world’s first wind-solar-battery hybrid project at the Kennedy Energy Hub in North Queensland, although that project is configured differently with 43MW of wind, 15MW of solar and a 4MW/4MWh battery.
The €61 million ($A101 million) Vattenfall project is expected to be in operation by September 2020 and, upon completion, will generate enough electricity for the equivalent of 40,000 average Dutch homes.
“Vattenfall wants to enable fossil-free living within one generation and hybrid power plants are an important building block for us in the direction of 100% fossil-free power generation,” said Gunnar Groebler, Senior Vice President and Head of Business Area Wind, Vattenfall.
“The complementary wind and solar generation profiles reduce the load on the grid compared to a single generation technology.
“Hybrid systems provide less pronounced peaks and we see fewer total times without production. This leads to a more efficient use of the network infrastructure. In addition, the costs for grid connection are significantly reduced compared to stand-alone systems. This will reduce the cost of renewable electricity and ultimately benefit customers.”
Construction will begin with the installation of six wind turbines in the north of Goeree-Overflakkee island between Middelharnis and Stad aan ‘t Haringvliet, before work on the solar farm can then commence. Batteries, to be supplied by BMW, will be installed in 12 shipping containers on the solar farm.
Vattenfall’s announcement comes less than a month after North American company NextEra Energy Resources announced a 250 MW onshore wind farm, a 250MW solar energy project, and a 200MW, 4-hour battery energy storage project.