RTE – Réseau de Transport d’électricité, the French electricity transmission system operator, is setting up three battery-based electricity storage sites that will be remotely controlled according to, in particular, energy production and consumption throughout the country.
The Vingeanne site, in Fontenelle, Côte-d’Or (South of France), is ready to start the test phase, which will last six months, before it is commissioned in May 2021. It is the first site in France to host this large-scale battery installation.
« Depending on the weather conditions, local electricity production may experience occasional peaks and be too abundant to be transported by the power grid. It is this surplus that will be stored by the Ringo batteries », explains Gaëtan Desquilbet, director of the Electric System 2025 project. With the latter, RTE is developing and testing battery control algorithms in order to solve the problems of localized production surpluses. This is a world first, according to RTE.
At the Vingeanne site in Fontenelle, which will be commissioned in May 2021 after six months of testing, the project involves Nidec ASI, the partner chosen for its power electronics converters and “power management system”.
« No less than 5,685 cells make up the batteries that have been installed in the 10 containers installed on the site. We talk about “modules”. Each module weighing 47 kg, the 270 tons of batteries required the presence of about ten operators trained to install this equipment, for nearly 5 weeks.
The Nidec batteries used are of the lithium-ion NMC (nickel, manganese, cobalt) type with high energy density and were installed during the summer. The site represents a storage capacity equivalent to the production of 5 wind turbines or the consumption of 10,000 homes (24 megawatt hours) ».
Once in operation, the Fontenelle site will have a storage capacity of 12 MW/24 MWh, equivalent to the production of five wind turbines or the consumption of 10,000 homes.
If the experiment is convincing, RTE could expand it and thus contribute to reducing the CO2 emissions of the energy mix. Through this energy recovery, the Ringo project could also defer or even avoid the construction of new power lines.
Sources :
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