VRB Power Systems is selling a 1.5 MW x 8 hour (12 MWH) VRB energy storage system to Tapbury Management, which oversees Sorne Hill Windfarm. The total contract value for VRB Power is approximately $6.3 million. Donegal, Ireland’s Sorne Hill is a recently commissioned 32MW windfarm.
The new storage system will be coupled to phase II of the Sorne project which is an additional 6.9 MW of wind power – turbines are due to be installed in the Fall of 2007. Tapbury has the option to expand the power and storage elements of the system to cover the existing 32MWs of wind power at Sorne, equating to approximately 50 MWH’s of additional VRB energy storage.
Tapbury is discussing the offtake of the VRB-ESS conditioned wind power from phase II at Sorne with Bord Gais Energy Supply, which has approximately 12 percent of the commercial electricity supply market in Ireland.
This sale follows on the heels of VRB’s recently announced sale of a smaller 120kWh system to Riso National Laboratory in Denmark.
At the end of 2005, renewables, largely wind, contributed 6.8 percent to Ireland’s electricity supply and the Irish Government has set the target of 15 percent renewable energy generated electricity by 2010. By mid 2006, the amount of installed and contracted renewable generation (mainly wind) in Ireland totaled 1,560 MW. There is a further 2,992 MW of renewable generation (again mainly wind) in the connection application process which would be a total of 4,552 MW of renewable generation on the system. This could give Ireland the largest share of renewable generation to total generation of any grid system in the world.