EFR: The Magnificent Seven
Following the issue of National Grid's invitation to tender for supply of Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) services back in July, the results are now in. Seven companies have been successful and will be providing energy storage facilities at eight sites across the UK resulting in an estimated 201MW of EFR capacity by March 2018.
EFR is a new service which is looking to provide capacity to the electricity network through technologies that can supply full power output within one second of activation. These supplies need to be automatically triggered in response to frequency fluctuations in the network and are required to provide the additional network stability needed due to the loss of system inertia as the number of heavy thermal plants across the country decreases.
Battery storage appears to be ideally suited to fulfil this need and in fact over ninety percent of the recent tenders fell into this category. The successful are listed below and will be supplying schemes of between 10 MW and 49 MW in size with contracts awarded for a duration of 4 years.
In response to the call for 200 MW of capacity, the total capacity submitted in the tender documentation surpassed 5000 MW, such systems are likely to become more commonplace as the UK works towards a smarter grid.
Also evident from the successful tenders is that the ability to locate such schemes adjacent to existing generating plant has been an advantage. EDF's successful bid is located next to its coal and gas plants in West Burton, Vattenfall's will be next to its Windfarm at Pen y Cymoedd and E.ON are to build a facility next to its biomass plant at Blackburn Meadows near Sheffield.
