Romania's Prime Batteries to build 72 MWh power storage facility for Hidroelectrica

The consortium formed by battery manufacturer Prime Batteries Technology and the engineering and technical consulting firm Enevo Group, both of them Romanian, won a RON 80 million (VAT excluded) contract to build a power storage facility at Hidroelectrica's (BVB: H2O) wind farm Crucea, Hidroelectrica announced in a note to investors. The facility should be commissioned within 12 months.

This investment marks a first for the company, being Hidroelectrica's debut project involving Li-ion battery energy storage.

The storage facility will have an absorption/delivery rate of 36 MW and a storage capacity of 72 MWh.

The main objective of this investment is to reduce internal imbalances within the wind farm in Hidroelectrica's portfolio, provide balancing services to the national power system, improve the performance of the wind turbines, and reduce wear and tear on the turbines' electromechanical systems. The construction of the storage facility will lead to "smoothing out the imbalances created by the Crucea Nord wind power plant between the forecast and produced energy quantities, due to wind power forecasts."

Hidroelectrica opted for the installation of a storage system with dry-cell batteries using lithium-ion technology. The other option considered but ultimately abandoned as less cost-effective, consisted of flow-cell batteries using vanadium-redox technology, according to Profit.ro.

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