Project name: Energy Superhub Oxford
Location: Oxford, UK
Capacity: 55 MWh (50 MW/50MWh Lithium-ion, 2MW/5MWh Vanadium flow battery)
Energisation date: July 2021 (Lithium-ion),
December 2021 (Vanadium flow)
Developer/asset owner: Pivot Power, part of EDF Renewables
Technology providers: Wärtsilä, Invinity Energy Systems
Optimiser and trader: Habitat Energy
Known globally for its university, Oxford is now making a name for itself as a testing ground for the largest hybrid battery energy storage system (BESS) of its kind anywhere in the world.
Energy Superhub Oxford (ESO), set to fully launch in the next few months, is the result of three years’ work by a consortium of private sector organisations, the local council (local authority) and the University of Oxford, plus government body Innovate UK which funded a quarter of its £41 million (US$55.8 million) cost.
The engine room of the ESO is the largest lithium-vanadium hybrid BESS in the world, which combines the high-power of lithium-ion battery storage with heavy-cycling, non-degrading vanadium redox flow. Also part of the project are the UK’s largest public electric vehicle (EV) charging park and 60 residential ground source heat pump retrofits. Vanadium batteries are at a much earlier stage of commercialisation than lithium, making the ESO fundamentally a demonstrator project with multiple, complementary aims.
Ask the council and it is likely to talk about reducing CO2 emissions by boosting EV take-up, demonstrating the smart heat pumps’ potential for energy and cost-saving, and helping the grid’s efforts to decarbonise.
Project developer Pivot Power’s COO/ CTO Mikey Clark — perhaps unsurprisingly given his engineering background — was keener to talk about the underlying unique hybrid battery technology’s potential to capitalise on developments in the UK grid services market.
“We really want to test how a flow battery could be co-optimised into lithium-ion-type systems,” he tells PV Tech Power about the reasoning behind the project.
The BESS is already live and set to be fully operational and trading in the electricity markets in the coming weeks – the lithium-ion system is already – while the EV park will open to the public in Q2 2022. But even before any of that, the project has already delivered numerous firsts and superlatives.
As well as being the largest lithium-vanadium hybrid installed anywhere in the world, it has the largest vanadium flow battery system in the UK, and largest BESS optimised by an AI-enabled optimisation & trading engine (OTE) in the country to date, provided by optimisation specialist Habitat Energy.
The unique hybrid battery launch is noteworthy amidst a total reshaping of the market for providing services to National Grid, the UK’s electricity grid operator. Increased volatility due to growing renew- able intermittent generation, a saturation of the ancillary services market and new services for power producers and BESSs to bid for, means a myriad of potential ways its effectiveness can be demonstrated.
More locally, Oxford City Council is hoping Energy Superhub Oxford can reduce the city’s annual CO2 emissions by 10,000 tonnes in year one and 25,000 tonnes by 2032 — equivalent to 3-4% of the city’s total scope 1 emissions in 2019 — primarily through energy trading, providing a model for other cities looking to decarbonise their economies.
Timeline
Q2 2019: Planning and preparation begins on BESS, EV network and heat network
Q1 2020: EV procurement by council bodies begins
Q3 2020: Construction begins on heat pump network
Q4 2020: Construction begins on BESS
Q2 2021: Construction begins on EV network; operation & evaluation starts on heat network
Q2 2021: Lithium-ion energised and begins trading in market; operation and evaluation begins on BESS
Q3 2021: Construction complete on vanadium flow battery
Q4 2021: Vanadium flow battery energised
Q1 2022: Vanadium flow battery starts trading in market
Q2 2022: All heat pumps built; EV charging park to open to general public
Q2 2022: All heat pumps built; EV charging park to open to general public
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