“No time to waste:” Huge big battery plans unveiled for Spain as accusations traded over blackout

Two European energy storage companies have this week announced plans to develop 2.2 gigawatts worth of utility-scale battery energy storage system projects across Spain, arguing that there is no time to waste following the recent reports into the cause of the country’s April’s blackout.

Global energy storage owner-operator BW ESS and Spanish energy storage developer Ibersun say a new joint venture is intended to build eight four-hour battery projects across the country, with a combined capacity of 2.2 GW, 8.8 GWh.

They hope to start construction of the projects within two years.

The joint venture marks the first entry for BW ESS into Spain, which aims to take advantage of the country’s National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan which is targeting energy storage capacity of 22.5GW by 2030.

“We have a common objective to improve Spain’s grid resilience and support the market’s ambitious energy storage growth targets,” said Isaac Garcia Moreno, executive director of BW ESS.

“Recent events have underlined that there’s no time to waste in working towards these goals, and we look forward to applying a wealth of experience drawn from multiple global markets to the Spanish context.”

Spain has had big plans for battery storage, but at the time of the April 28 blackout it had just 60 MW of installed battery storage, and a government report, and numerous experts, have said the lack of battery storage left the grid vulnerable to the type of cascading events that occurred on that day.

The government report found that the blackout was caused by an “overvoltage” problem, an issue compounded with what it said were poor decisions by the grid operator, and the failure of several thermal plants to do what they were paid to do.

A day later, the grid operator Red Electrica published its own analysis laying virtually all blame on the country’s generators, and essentially exonerating itself of all fault.

Then, the Spanish power utilities lobby AELEC disputed Red Electrica’s conclusions in its own announcement this week, standing behind the government’s analysis and blaming Red Electrica for the blackout.

According to AELEC, while 10 synchronous generators had been deemed necessary to guarantee system security on the day of the blackout, and two were available in Andalusia the day before, “the decision changed on the day of the blackout, and only one of those generators remained operational.”

“As a result, only one combined-cycle generator remained connected to stabilize the entire vast area of ​​Andalusia, when the operator itself had initially planned for two. This generator represented only 3% of the generation in the area where the power outage originated, and its voltage control capacity was clearly insufficient.”

Most experts agree that Spain’s lack of battery storage capacity left it facing a situation similar to that of the “system black” events in South Australia of 2016 – events that led directly to the construction of the world’s first big battery, South Australia’s Hornsdale Power Reserve.

Without battery storage to act as a ‘buffer’ or ‘shock absorbers’ for the integration of renewable energy into a country’s electricity grid, the lack of flexibility and speed of response can lead to an inability to quickly address disruptions to the grid.