Mr Seán Kelly MEP recently hosted FuturEnergy Ireland at the European Parliament in Brussels for a breakfast briefing on multi-day energy storage attended by a highly engaged and broad cross-section of stakeholders and MEPs.
FuturEnergy Ireland CEO Peter Lynch who spoke at the breakfast event, Intermittency to Reliability: Unlocking EU Energy Security with Multi-Day Storage, was joined by Mateo Jamarillo, CEO of Form Energy, and Bram Claeys of the Regulatory Assistance Project.
The speakers addressed the issues of inadequate grid and wasted green power, and illustrated how multi-day Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) can provide a clear solution to weather-driven volatility in our power system, which is increasingly dependent on intermittent renewable energy sources.
"FuturEnergy Ireland is well positioned to deliver an important first by building Europe’s first multi-day LDES project using Form Energy’s pioneering iron-air battery technology, and making wasted green power a thing of the past," said Peter Lynch. "Iron-air batteries can store electricity for up to 100 hours compared with the 4-6 hours of current technology, thus tackling periods of low or excess wind and sun, and increasing our energy security."
Competitiveness, affordability and energy independence are among the EU’s highest priorities. LDES aligns with all of these. This debate will continue to evolve and become increasingly urgent as policies are brought forward which better reflect renewables-led electricity systems. One such policy is the revision of the EU Energy Security Strategy, which must prioritise acceleration of LDES deployment.
The FuturEnergy Ireland team believes that LDES has an extremely important and impactful role to play as Europe moves to the serious and harder end of the decarbonisation process. It is well documented how grid capacity and functionality is preventing further large-scale deployment of renewables and, specifically in the case of curtailment/dispatch down, how poor grid availability is materially eroding the sizeable cost benefits that domestically sourced green power naturally enjoys.
As a Company, we are constantly exploring new solutions to enable our onshore wind portfolio, and we place our LDES battery strategy, using Form Energy’s technology, firmly in that category," said Lynch. "We believe that this technology can unlock a further 0.75-1GW of onshore wind capacity from within our portfolio in the next decade.
"We are proud to be associated with the first planning grant for a 100-hour battery technology in Europe, and will continue to drive innovation, in the first instance by building this first project, Ballynahone Energy Storage, so that its system benefits are fully/more visible and capable of informing the required storage policies."
For more on this project, please visit www.ballynahoneenergystorage.ie.
