AES Advancion® Fleet Accelerates Energy Storage Market in Europe
The AES Netherlands Advancion® Energy Storage Array was officially unveiled to the public yesterday at a ceremony attended by representatives from the European Commission, transmission system operator TenneT, senior leaders from The AES Corporation, and representatives from key suppliers and partners. The unveiling of the array, located in Vlissingen, features Advancion 4, the largest and most advanced energy storage platform operating in both Europe and globally. The array will enable greater levels of renewable energy integration, enhance grid reliability and reduce emissions and costs by providing fast response balancing services to the electric grid.
“An ever growing number of renewable energy sources in Europe will require breakthrough technologies for grid stabilization and balancing. Electrical energy storage can play a key role in the enhanced use of renewable energy and development of smart grids in Europe. Emerging market models such as AES’, will be pivotal for large scale deployment of electrical energy storage in Europe,” said Ms. Andreea Strachinescu, European Commission Head of Unit for New Energy Technologies, Innovation and Clean Coal.
Advancion 4, the latest Advancion design revealed in November 2015, is a complete, battery-based alternative to traditional peaking power plants and pumped hydroelectric storage projects that provides a dependable, smart and cost-competitive means to modernize power systems. It features best-in-class Advancion pre-certified suppliers, including Samsung SDI, who supplied the array with more than 45,000 batteries in its first Advancion deployment. Additional project suppliers and partners include inverter supplier Parker Hannifin and balance of plant provider DELTA Infra and its subcontractors.
“We are proud to have our advanced battery technology selected to be part of this Advancion array,” remarked Sewoong Park, head of ESS Business at Samsung SDI. “We look forward to further participating in the Advancion platform as it is expanded in Europe and elsewhere.”
“Our power conversion systems are highly scalable and can be customized for a number of applications, making them ideal for use with the AES Advancion solution architecture,” said Jim Hoelscher, General Manager, Parker Hannifin’s Global Energy Grid Tie Division. “We are happy to build on our long history of working with AES.”
The Advancion array provides 10 MW of interconnected energy storage, equivalent to 20 MW of flexible resource to the grid. The array competes weekly with traditional generators to provide balancing services to the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Austria via the TenneT system. According to Ms. Gineke Van Dijk, Senior Manager of Customers and Markets at TenneT, “This AES investment fits perfectly into TenneT’s vision that grid stability should be less dependent on large conventional power plants in the future. If wind and solar energy continue to increase, batteries will be an excellent alternative to take over this role of power plants.”
To expand the availability of its award-winning Advancion energy storage platform more broadly in Europe and around the world, AES recently announced an alliance initiative with select leading companies who will offer Advancion directly to utilities and other energy participants. “Advancion is infinitely scalable, geographically dispersable and a smart, modern and low-cost solution to today’s grid challenges,” said Steve Corwell, AES Europe Vice President.
In addition to the Netherlands array, AES recently completed its Kilroot Advancion Array in Northern Ireland, also providing 10 MW of interconnected energy storage, equivalent to 20 MW of flexible resource. AES Advancion now powers the largest fleet of advanced energy storage projects in Europe. Globally, AES works with customers to integrate energy storage into eight different power markets and AES’ energy storage solutions represent the world’s largest advanced energy storage fleet, with 116 MW and three million megawatt-hours of delivered service. AES has announced construction or late stage development of an additional 268 MW of interconnected energy storage.
