Abstract

The energy landscape has been changing dramatically over the past several years. Renewable generation plays a larger role in today’s market and that role continues to expand. The dependency on the weather and time of day is now a more influential factor in power generation than it was in the past.

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In an ideal situation, renewable generation would produce exactly the amount of power demanded at exactly the time it was needed, but that turns out to be the exception rather than the rule.

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Sudden periods of calm winds as well as continuous overcast days can very quickly cause wind turbines and solar plants to produce far less energy or even none at all.

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Grid operators subsequently must intervene faster and more often to maintain grid stability and ensure a secure supply These requirements demand conventional power generation units to respond more and more quickly and flexibly.

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Conventional turbine power generation units can start very fast – some of them can reach base load in less than 30 minutes, simple cycle plants even under 10 minutes ‐ but they all cannot achieve an instantaneous start to full power within milliseconds.

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However, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) can be used perfectly for such high‐dynamic purposes, and this technology has developed substantially over the last few years

• technically ‐ since it is a fast growing market – and

• commercially ‐ since the costs for the battery cells have significantly decreased

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SIESTART ‐ the combination of conventional power generations units with BESS combines the benefits from all systems and provides new opportunities by a couple of additional use‐cases:

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When load fluctuations in the grid suddenly occur, the battery storage system can feed additional power into the grid in just milliseconds. The gas turbines can then be adapted to the higher load more slowly and thus with less stress on the material, while the infeed from the battery can be automatically reduced.

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Similarly, this also applies to overcapacities in the grid. The excess power is used to charge the battery storage unit and reduces stress on the turbine material which would otherwise occur with rapid load adjustments.

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This enables SIESTART to react according to the market requirements, even extreme challenging grid services can be served, e.g. Enhanced Frequency Regulation (EFR, UK Grid‐code). This is just to mention one of the additional use‐cases beside to the fact that SIESTART states as well an answer to the raising demand on Black‐start ability.

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Summarizing the above SIESTART is the right answer to the rapidly changing energy market environment.

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SIESTART optimizes the profitability of power generation assets with short amortization periods whether they already exist (retrofits) or just get developed as new built projects.