Incorporation of energy storage into offshore wind farms for load levelling and energy security

Project Description:

The project will examine the use of energy storage in off-shore wind farms to provide a more continuous power flow from the farm to the grid. The integration of differing energy storage technologies will facilitate long and short-term storage for the turbines / farm as a whole, and ease the intermittency of supply for the grid. The project will also include an investigation as to the return on investment for incorporation of energy storage, and provision of services to the grid through the wind farm grid connection. An investigation as to the potential for incorporating the energy storage as part of the floating structure will also be examined in terms of storage lifetime and maintenance requirements. This project is highly relevant to both government policy and the ‘green’ agenda.

The project will examine the incorporation of energy storage into a single offshore floating wind generator, then expand this to examine the interaction of a number of generators with inherent energy storage to look at the potential system behaviour and interactions. Finally, the interaction with the grid will be studied to investigate the possibility of grid support, and the ‘black start’ of the wind farm.