REstore, part of Centrica Business Solutions, a leader in demand side management, announced today that it successfully launched 32 MW of primary reserve / frequency regulation using one of Europe’s largest, grid scale battery storage projects pooled with C&I consumers. REstore’s DER Management System furthermore delivers revenues from Day-Ahead and Intraday wholesale markets on top of primary reserve / frequency regulation, a strategy commonly labelled as “value stacking”: to maximize return on investment for the battery investor, extra revenue streams from automated trading in wholesale markets are generated, without negative impact on the provision of primary reserve / frequency regulation.
An 18 MW Tesla battery located at the Terhills luxury resort, combined with a mix of demand response assets from C&I consumers, provides up to 32 MW to the European Transmission Grid Operators. REstore’s mixed asset VPPs are made up of distributed energy resources like storage batteries, IoT applications and large-scale industrial loads to deliver a sustainable and innovative smart grid solution to reduce the need for gas-fired peaker plants and to decarbonize the energy market.
Terhills invested €11 million in this unique battery project and selected REstore, with its patented DER Management System, to pool the battery for delivery to the primary reserve and Tesla for its high performance Powerpack energy storage system. Batteries are playing an increasingly important role in the new energy world by providing flexibility to reduce intermittencies and improve the reliability of Europe’s electrical infrastructure. By aggregating battery storage systems for grid services, storage developers can access additional revenue streams, which is key to the successful financing and build out of more storage.
REstore’s patent-protected DERMS, FlexPondTM, can uniquely manage and control a diverse portfolio of flexible assets in sub-second response time, providing ancillary services to the system operator for reliable energy delivery which allows for the growth of distributed energy resources. “Our patented algorithms can deliver synthetic portfolios of flexible distributed energy resources with grid scale batteries, large industrial loads, and residential appliances like water tanks and heat pumps to expand the notion of cloud-based VPPs to include a broader array of Internet of Things assets”, said Pieter-Jan Mermans, co-CEO, REstore. “This 18 MW battery is currently one of the largest batteries in Europe contributing to the primary operating reserve”, added Jan-Willem Rombouts, co-CEO, REstore, “What makes this battery project unique is its inclusion in a larger flexibility portfolio, which results into a 1.5x higher revenue stream for the battery, compared to the base-case where the battery is monetised on a standalone basis.”
The battery project, located in Belgium, is operational and has been providing sustainable primary reserve to the Belgian Transmission System Operator Elia, since April 2018.
To learn more about REstore, visit the website here.
Media Contact: If you are a journalist and would like to get in touch with our media team, please contact media_NA@centrica.com.
