Orsted and Highview Power investigate co-locating energy storage with offshore wind

ORSTED, a renewable energy company, and energy storage developer Highview Power have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on proving the feasibility and economic value of co-locating long duration energy storage with offshore wind.

The partners will carry out detailed technical and economic analysis during the year. They will investigate combining Orsted’s wind technology with Highview’s liquid air energy storage to deliver a future offshore wind project that can reduce wind curtailment, increase productivity, and help move to a more flexible, resilient, zero carbon grid.

They said that their partnership comes at a critical moment in the UK’s energy transition, highlighting that offshore wind is expected to play a key role in achieving net zero by 2050, and the need to accelerate and scaleup offshore wind deployment. In the UK’s sixth carbon budget, the Climate Change Committee encouraged the government to achieve 100 GW or more of offshore wind by 2050. In its energy security strategy, published in April 2022, the UK government set the goal of achieving 50 GW of offshore wind by 2030 – up from a previous target of 40 GW – and noted that 11 GW had already been installed while another 12 GW was in the pipeline.

Energy storage will play an important role in supporting power network stability and improving wind farm efficiency, the partners added. They note that the lack of renewable energy storage during peak conditions this winter prevented the UK from storing as much as 1.35 TWh of wind energy, instead relying on £60bn (US$74.65bn) worth of gas over this period.

Duncan Clark, managing director of offshore and country chair of UK & Ireland at Orsted, said: “Our collaboration with Highview Power is an important step in creating effective energy storage solutions that unlock greater value from next generation wind farms and support the evolution of our power grid. Together our technologies can be a catalyst to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and help unlock the economic potential of that transition for the UK.”