A 15MW/16.4MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) provided by Fluence has been inaugurated on the Portuguese island of Madeira.
Project manager Diogo Vasconcelos for Empresa de Electricidade da Madeira (EEM), the island’s main utility, announced the inauguration of BESS Vitória via Linkedin on 14 November.
The system sits on the main island of Madeira, a four-island archipelago which is an autonomous community of Portugal. The install is part of a project including another, 3.3MWh system on the smaller island of Porto Santo.
The project has been developed by EEM, which handed the contract to global battery storage system integrator Fluence and parent company Siemens (through its Smart Infrastructure arm).
As Energy-Storage.news wrote at the time the project was announced, the BESS will allow EEM to increase the island’s renewable energy mix to 50%, black start parts of the network and restore grid operations after outages.
The system is made up of Fluence’s lithium iron phosphate-based (LFP) modular energy storage product.
“With this asset, it will be possible to increase the RES (renewable energy sources) hybridisation of our regional electrical system leading to a better grid stabilisation and security of supply by improving key parameters of the electrical grid (frequency & voltage), thus keeping our electrical grid stronger and more resilient to support the regional energy transition that we all aim for,” EEM project manager Vasconcelos said on LinkedIn.
The project has been partly financed by the EU-funded €25 billion (US$25.8 billion) POSEUR programme – ‘Operational Programme for Sustainability and Efficient Use of Resources’. The programme was established in 2014 to support Portugal’s energy transition sustainable economic development.
The Iberian country has not announced a significant number of energy storage projects this year but those that have are sizeable. In July, a 40GWh pumped hydro storage facility from utility Iberdrola came online while in March, Enel Group was awarded the grid connection rights to develop a renewable enegy park with a 168.6MW BESS to replace the country’s last coal power plant.