Towards net zero: is battery storage leading the way?
As the UK decarbonises and real time balancing of the electricity system becomes more challenging, battery energy storage will play a crucial role in maintaining a stable system. The UK’s Electricity System Operator, National Grid ESO, has the ambition of operating a zero-carbon electricity system by 2025. This growing requirement for robust real time balancing of the system has been the dominant revenue driver for battery storage projects over the last few years, via Firm Frequency Response. As the ESO begins a journey of reform in UK frequency regulation via new services such as Dynamic Containment, and 2025 draws closer, we look back at how the system has changed and the impact that batteries have already had, through the lens of grid frequency.
The UK’s electricity system has been rapidly decarbonising over the last few years: renewables accounted for 19.1% of generation in 2014. In 2020, this figure stood at 44.1%. As we move towards a zero-carbon grid, a higher proportion of electricity comes from renewables with no rotating mass, and this has an impact on how the system is operated – not just in dealing with GW swings in wind generation within a few hours, but in the delicate balance of supply and demand over a matter of seconds.
The spinning turbines of traditional power generation give rise to system ‘inertia’: similar to a bike wheel that keeps turning when you stop pedalling, inertia is an important part of the stability of a power system. Grid frequency is then the needle showing the stability of that system; when all things are equal, it is 50Hz. When they are not, blackouts can occur – frequency plummeted to 48.8Hz on August 9th 2019, leading to nationwide power cuts.
Here, we look in some detail at grid frequency since 2014: at the trends in frequency ‘events’ (when frequency spikes or dips in response to an outage), and in the way the system recovers. Because we have many more renewables now, system inertia has decreased. We see that year on year, grid frequency is becoming more volatile (see Figure 1), and events are becoming longer. However, the rate of change of frequency (RoCoF) is becoming less severe (Figure 2).
So why would RoCoF, a key indicator of system stability, be getting ‘less’ bad with decreasing inertia? One explanation for this is in the new technologies which have been coming onto our system in recent years. National Grid ESO, the UK’s Electricity System Operator, procure an array of services to balance supply and demand in real time. One of the most important of these is dynamic firm frequency response (FFR), in which a plant moderates its output to help balance the system in real time, given the system frequency. It has become dominated by batteries, which, when operated well, can respond reliably and nearly-instantaneously to frequency events – and crucially for net-zero, cleanly.
Figure 3 shows the volumes of frequency response from different technology types. Since 2014, batteries have gone from providing no FFR volume to now providing virtually all FFR volumes. This, alongside frequency regulation volumes delivered by batteries via Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) tenders, and more recently the Dynamic Containment (DC) auctions, mean the UK now has close to 1GW of low carbon, ultra-fast battery storage providing real time frequency regulation to balance the electricity system.
Looking at two comparable frequency events, one from summer 2017 and one from summer 2019, we can corroborate this theory. There were similar conditions on these days – a similar national demand (INDO), wind outturn, and a sudden power loss equivalent to around 2% of total demand (Table 1). The event in 2019 is after the evening peak, when national demand is decreasing, while the one in 2017 is during the evening ramp. Figure 4 shows the frequency trace for these two events, on a common time axis.
Despite the slightly smaller loss in generation causing the 2017 frequency event, it was more severe – with a larger RoCoF and reaching a lower frequency: 49.57 vs 49.70 Hz. The post-event response overshoots and subsequently the frequency remains high for a couple of minutes, whereas the 2019 event returns to a frequency close to 50Hz. While time of day considerations may be at play, it is interesting to consider the volumes of frequency response on the system during both of these periods: see Figure 5. The earlier event had around 30% more dynamic FFR volume. Logic then says the system should stabilize more quickly to a comparable loss, but the opposite is true. However, there is a marked shift in the makeup of that volume; batteries in both FFR and EFR provide significantly more of the stack in 2019.
The fault recovery of the system appears much better in 2019, suggesting all of these batteries are really improving our response to unplanned plant outages. Returning to the bicycle analogy, it’s much easier to stop a bike from falling over if you catch it just as it starts to topple rather than just before it hits the ground. Batteries are so much faster as compared to the gas, pumped storage and hydro plants which dominated just a few years ago, and it means the system operator needs less volumes to provide the “same” service, so it’s more efficient. Batteries are also very happy performing these low utilisation services – we see very low levels of cell degradation in battery systems performing FFR over long periods of time, and it can be easily stacked with other services.
All this is great news for net-zero. Leaps and strides in energy storage technology over the last few years, alongside the platforms which operate them, mean we can integrate far more intermittent renewable generation into our electricity mix – whilst ensuring the system remains robust and secure, crucial in our highly electrified society. As we build more wind and more solar, the importance of battery storage technologies in operating a decarbonised, digitalised, democratised and decentralised system will continue to grow. And, not just in frequency regulation but across the board of balancing requirements.
Written By Grecia Monsalve