Enerparc commissions ‘Innovation Tender’ solar PV project with 8MWh BESS in Germany

Developer Enerparc has turned on its first solar-plus-storage project in Germany awarded under 2020/21’s Innovation Tender.

The company announced the project in Büttel, Schleswig-Holstein was operational yesterday (12 April). A battery energy storage system (BESS) was installed at the 35MW Büttel solar park.

The BESS has a power rating of 12MW and an energy storage capacity of 8MWh, meaning a discharge duration of 40 minutes (0.66 hours). It was installed in six 40-foot containers and Enerparc claimed it is one of the largest batteries installed in combination with a ground-mounted solar plant in Germany.

“We are making it possible for the large-scale storage facility, together with the solar park, to be a central part for tomorrow’s energy markets. For institutional investors, too, such storage projects are the most effective way to become CO2-neutral. We are therefore also looking forward to soon being able to connect three further PV storage systems to the grid,” says Christoph Koeppen, CEO and chairman of the board of Enerparc.

The company concluded a power purchase agreement (PPA) for the offtake of the site with Axpo Germany, the local arm of the Swiss-based wind energy and energy trading firm, in April 2022. Though Enerparc’s own trading subsidiary Sunnic Lighthouse will be structuring the feed-in of the energy to the market.

It did not reveal the technology provider for the BESS portion of the project.

The project was awarded under the round of Germany’s Innovation Tender programme for co-located renewable and storage projects which was concluded in 2021. The Innovation Tender is running annually until 2028 and a total of 5,450MW of capacity is expected to be procured in that time, consultancy Clean Horizon recently told Energy-Storage.news.

The systems must be charged from the renewable asset and need to be able to provide aFRR (automatic Frequency Restoration Reserve) services although are not actually obliged to participate, analysts Naim El Chami and Vitor Gialdi Carvalho added. The Innovation Tender is similar to one being implemented in Spain.

Last month, a smaller project in Saxony came online, commissioned by developer and independent power producer (IPP) Qair Energy, the first from the Tender to come online in the state.

Germany’s utility-scale BESS market has started to pick up in the past year after a prolonged period of stagnancy, with a record amount installed last year. The main drivers are increased energy market volatility driving revenue opportunities in the wholesale trading and ancillary service markets, increased investor comfort with the asset class as well as the Innovation Tender.

The Tender awards a premium per kWh of energy discharged to the market from assets that combine two or more clean energy technologies.