Vattenfall inaugurates largest onshore wind farm
On the 28th September Vattenfall`s largest onshore wind farm, Pen y Cymoedd in Wales, was inaugurated. This means that Vattenfall takes one more step towards supplying climate-smart solutions to its customers. And by co-locating renewable energy production with associated storage facilities, Vattenfall aims to promote the transition to a new energy system.
It is Vattenfall’s largest onshore wind farm, supplying 188,000 households with renewable electricity from wind power. Pen y Cymoedd could also become the largest commercial wind farm in the world with a co-located battery facility for storing electricity.
At the inauguration, Vattenfall’s CEO Magnus Hall stressed the importance of producing and storing energy at the same site: “We want to continue growing in the renewable sector to become fossil free within a generation. With Pen y Cymoedd, and the possibility to store energy, we continue to transform our energy production and find new and innovative ways to help customers and partners to be climate smart.
Gunnar Groebler, heading Vattenfall´s Wind Business involving investments of €5 billion over five years said: “Today’s inauguration of Pen y Cymoedd wind farm highlights a very important step for us. Completing our so far largest onshore wind farm successfully underlines that we are well on track with our ambitious goals in wind power. We are very proud, that Pen y Cymoedd will provide green energy to the equivalent of 15 percent of the households in Wales. Now we are looking forward to equip Pen y Cymoedd with additional battery storage capacity in order to support the grid integration of renewable energy we produce here in Wales.”
In March, Vattenfall and the BMW Group signed an agreement for the supply of up to 1,000 lithium-ion batteries this year. The batteries, which have a capacity of 33 kilowatt hours (kWh) each, will be packaged and installed at Pen y Cymoedd in the fourth quarter this year and deliver enhanced frequency response to National Grid hence help to integrate renewable energy to the energy system.