'UK must reform green auctions to help pair wind with energy storage'

The UK government must reform its annual renewables auction to allow more energy storage and green hydrogen facilities to pair with offshore wind farms and help combat curtailment, says RenewableUK.

The trade association made the call for action today in a new report setting out ways to build more energy storage and green hydrogen projects alongside offshore wind farms.

Putting UK wind power to better use has become an increasing concern amid rising levels of curtailment, with the current roughly 30GW fleet regularly generating more power than the grid can handle.

“The UK has a great opportunity to build a more resilient energy system by integrating batteries and green hydrogen projects into offshore wind infrastructure, either at sea or near substations onshore,” said RenewableUK senior policy analyst Yonna Vitanova.

“But at the moment neither the CfD process nor the planning system are set up in a way to encourage this.”

“This report provides a blueprint for government to address the challenges renewable energy developers face when considering co-location as part of their business plans. With clearer rules and regulations in place, the UK can unleash the benefits co-location can provide to the system and ultimately to billpayers.”

Currently, RenewableUK said that just 3MW of operational battery storage capacity is co-located with offshore wind in UK waters – although a further 600MW of potential battery storage has consent to go ahead and several developers are exploring opportunities for co-location with green hydrogen.

The report calls for reforming the UK’s annual Contracts for Difference (CfD) renewable energy auctions to encourage the co-location of energy storage and offshore wind.

The current system restricts the ability to develop offshore wind co-located sites while maintaining the integrity of the CfD, said RenewableUK, which calls for hybrid metering to leverage offshore co-location models.

The government has already said that hybrid metering will not be introduced in the upcoming CfD auction, AR7, saying more work is needed to investigate the interaction between this and offshore wind.

The government should also investigate and implement policies to incentivise an interface between offshore wind and green hydrogen production, said RenewableUK.

It further called for reforming rules that restrict owners of offshore transmission cables and electricity substations from entering this new market, so that storage and green hydrogen projects can be built more easily alongside offshore wind.

Other proposals include improving the efficiency of the planning system by enabling developers to seek consent for offshore wind and energy storage projects simultaneously; and building a network of pipelines to transport green hydrogen produced using electricity from offshore wind farms from where it’s generated to where it’s needed.