The Latvian transmission system operator Augstsprieguma tīkls (AST) signed a contract for the supply and installation of the battery energy storage system (BESS) in substations in Tume and Rēzekne with the German company Rolls-Royce Solutions, whose offer to implement the project for 77.07 million euros was the most economically advantageous in the competition of three suppliers.
The supply and installation of the battery systems with a total capacity of 60 megawatts (MW) and a storage capacity of 120 megawatt-hours (MWh) in Rezekne will be 100 per cent financed by the European Union under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RePowerEU), while the 20 MW/40 MWh BESS in Tume and the substation expansion works in Tume and Rēzekne will be 75 per cent co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF).
“Battery systems are an important infrastructure project for the security and stability of Latvia’s energy supply, allowing the necessary balancing reserves in the network to be ensured, the amount of which will increase significantly after synchronisation,” said Rolands Irklis, Chairman of the Management Board of AST. “I am pleased that the professional work of the AST Procurement Committee ensured competition among suppliers, which allowed the selection of the most economically advantageous solution and the necessary equipment to be provided by one of the world’s most renowned manufacturers of energy storage systems. It is significant that we have been able to attract more than 85 per cent of European Union funding for this project.”
The state-of-the-art battery system is expected to provide the high-speed and automatically-activated frequency regulation reserves needed for synchronisation mode, in which the Baltic electricity transmission systems work in synchronisation with the continental European grids. In addition, the battery system will be able to provide these reserves at a lower cost than the majority of conventional power plants, which are currently the only ones able to offer this service.