The Netherlands – Wärtsilä will supply GIGA Storage BV in the Netherlands with a 25-megawatt (MW) / 48-megawatt hour (MWh) energy storage system to help stabilize the electric grid.
This will be Wärtsilä’s first energy storage project in the Netherlands, and it will be the largest system the country has ever seen. The order was placed in December 2021 with Wärtsilä order intake, and the system is expected to be operational in October 2022.
At the Widnet smart grid, located at the Wageningen University & Research test centre in Lelystad, the Wärtsilä energy storage system, known as the GIGA Buffalo battery, will be co-located with wind and solar assets. The battery will be used by Eneco, a leading energy provider in the Netherlands, to make its energy services more sustainable and to add more renewable energy to the grid. Energy storage will also aid in the optimization of the power system, the regulation of energy frequency and grid reliability, and the increase of revenues. It will store the equivalent of more than 9,000 households’ annual energy consumption, making it the largest energy storage project in the Netherlands to date.
The Dutch government has set a target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 49 percent by 2030 and 95 percent by 2050. Renewable energy growth in the Netherlands and across Europe has helped to decarbonize the energy system, but it has also caused congestion on electrical networks, necessitating the use of energy storage for reliability. According to recent reports, the Netherlands will require energy storage capacity of between 29 and 54 gigawatts (GW) by 2050.
The Buffalo battery will be Europe’s first large-scale energy storage project based on lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry, which offers improved safety and requires fewer natural resources. GridSolv Quantum, a fully integrated, modular, and compact energy storage system from Wärtsilä, as well as the GEMS Digital Energy Platform, Wärtsilä’s sophisticated energy management system, will be used in the project. Wärtsilä’s Service+ GAP solution, which provides maintenance with performance guarantees, will be used to optimize it. Wärtsilä will provide the energy storage system under a long-term service agreement and extended equipment delivery.
