Substation battery banks (SBB) in electrical substations participate in black start recovery processes and provide essential back-up power supply for protection, control, telecommunications, and lighting. With stringent limitations on space and increasing requirements for safety and reliability, potential battery sizing optimisation opportunities may be possible to enable reliable, secure, space, time and cost-effective substation energy storage. Battery efficiency with optimal use supports the energy system transition by supporting evolving substation loads requiring appropriate scaling design that avoids costs in either oversizing initial banks or reinstalling entirely new banks. This project considers existing and future battery banks improvements to best practice, better chemistries, and online monitoring techniques with expected benefits in reducing carbon footprint and maintenance costs whilst informing correct & adaptive battery sizing. 

Benefits

NGET’s capital & operational budget shows that £54m investment is expected over 10 years around LVAC systems, with approximately 600 battery replacements in RIIO-T2/3. The assumption for the benefit estimation is that this project would harvest 5% savings of the planned investment. The innovative case is envisaged to result in £20,000 footprint savings per each new substation​. This yields potential savings/NPV benefits over the next 10 years of approximately £3.240m.