New battery storage plan for Limekiln wind farm near Reay
A 24-turbine wind farm in Caithness is looking to add a battery storage system to the development.
The Limekiln wind farm, just south of Reay, became fully operational at the start of this month – and now there are plans to add the Limekiln Battery Energy Storage System (BESS).
The developer Boralex said its latest plans were at an early stage and it is due to hold a community drop-in event next week to share its proposals.
This first round of consultation is aimed at giving local residents a chance to hear about the new proposal and put questions to the team.
The BESS project will have a capacity of up to 70MW and, while it will share grid infrastructure with the wind farm, it would be operated as a separate entity as that is “the most economic way to market”.
A spokeswoman for Boralex said: “This first round of community consultation will set out the location and give some background into the application process as well as the issues we understand are at the forefront of communities’ minds.”
She explained that the need for such battery storage systems is to make better use of renewable energy facilities while the grid infrastructure remains limited in terms of its export capacity. It would also reduce the need for constraint payments.
“BESS in the north of Scotland region are able to bid against the constraint market (as a load),” she explained. “As long as the BESS is charging up during a period where constraint payments would otherwise be paid, then there is no need for constraint payments up to the capacity of the BESS, so the requirement for constraint payments across the region is reduced.
“The electricity system operator (NESO) has the difficult job of ensuring power demand and supply are always equal.
“However, there is the added complexity that most electricity supply comes from the north of Scotland and the demand comes from the south of England. Currently, our transmission cables do not have the capacity to take all the generation from the north and send it to the south, this is why constraint payments are so high.
“BESS in the north of Scotland is ideally placed to absorb excess generation without incurring extra constraint payments for NESO. With more BESS in constrained areas the burden on the system operator is eased, using energy that would previously have been wasted and reducing the need for fossil fuels to manage over- and under-capacity in the system.”
The community open day will take place on Thursday, April 17, from 1pm to 7pm at Reay village hall.
All the material shared at the open day will also be available on the consultation page of the website from that date.
Opponents of the Limekiln scheme previously warned that the wind farm would dominate the skyline for miles around, and that Reay residents would find themselves “encircled by turbines” if all the proposed onshore and offshore developments in the area went ahead.
The main scheme consists of 19 turbines, reduced from 21. The Limekiln extension plan, adding a further five turbines, was given the go-ahead in May 2022, with construction taking place from last year.
Each turbine has a maximum capacity of 4.2MW. Highland Council had originally refused consent for the development in 2019 but that decision was overturned by the Scottish Government.
The 11 square metre site, previously used as commercial forestry plantation, contains 24 turbines with a maximum blad-tip height of 149.9m and was commissioned on April 1.
