Executive Summary
- Battery energy storage systems are increasingly being seen as a key technology for the water industry in ensuring sustainability, affordable energy, and security of supply
- Dale Power Solutions announced it has secured a new contract for BESS to support a water client, set to deliver a 60kW / 200 kWh solution with a projected 29,000 kWh of annual site consumption and one-year ROI
- Ben Reed, BESS business development manager, said he was delighted the water industry was becoming more open to adopting BESS technology and hoped that it ‘represents a shift towards further BESS adoption in this sector’
In 2022, Water UK published a whitepaper entitled ‘Water 2050’, which outlined what it described as ‘enormous’ challenges to its purpose. The largest, not surprisingly, was the climate emergency, and fitting in to meeting the UK’s emissions reductions targets under the Net Zero 2050 commitment was a key part of that.
The whitepaper noted how action on net zero would support other priorities – such as increasing operational resilience by deploying renewables. “Solar and wind generation, coupled with battery storage makes our sites more resilient when power grids fail, meaning water customers remain in supply, and grid operators can focus their attention on other priorities such as asset health,” the paper noted, adding deploying more systems would also protect customers from energy price shocks.
That’s the theory, but what is it looking like in practice right now? Battery energy storage systems (BESS) are understandably seen as a key weapon for the water industry in ensuring sustainability and affordable energy, as well as security of supply – and there are some interesting use cases emerging.
Earlier this month, Dale Power Solutions announced it had secured a new contract for a BESS to support a client in the water sector. The project is set to deliver a 60kW / 200kWh solution, at a projected 29,000 kWh of annual site consumption and a predicted one-year return on investment.
Security of supply is built in: in the event of a power outage, the BESS will operate in ‘grid-forming mode’ to ensure a continuous electricity supply. The system will also utilise load-shifting capabilities, to allow the site to shift energy consumption from peak to off-peak periods and take advantage of time-of-use tariffs.
Dale Power Solutions also emphasised the importance of site security in the build, with its SR4-rated GRP enclosure designed to resist forced entry, as well as network infrastructure. Future expansion and flexibility was another area taken into consideration, with potential integration of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels included.
Another case study, this time in Scotland, has grid constraints as the primary problem to solve. Scottish Water Horizons, a water treatment facility and commercial subsidiary of Scottish Water – the single largest user of electricity in Scotland – was looking to install more low-carbon energy projects at scale, including solar PV coupled with BESS, yet grid constraints thwarted them.
The solution was to utilise DC-coupled BESS technology from Wattstor. A bespoke system design enabled installation of 1.1MW of solar PV, along with a 200kW/1.6MWh DC-coupled BESS, alongside safety measures from fault detection, to automatic shutdown systems, to battery fire suppression. The solar panels ‘send DC electricity directly to the BESS system via optimisers, and then out to the site via a single AC inverter’, meaning Scottish Water Horizons could install as much solar PV as they wished direct to the battery whilst maintaining the 200kW AC grid connection.
The upshot was that Scottish Water Horizons was able to install five times more renewable generation assets, boosting its generation capacity to 1.2 megawatts, covering more than 30% of the site’s power demand. Including the batteries meant the provider had been able to maximise the potential of the site to generate renewable energy.
“We’re delighted to see the water industry becoming more open to adopting BESS technology, considering the operational and sustainability pressures within the sector,” commented Ben Reed, Dale Power Solutions BESS business development manager, of the new project. “We also hope this represents a shift towards further BESS adoption in this sector.”
