Largest Grid-Scale Ultracapacitor Under Development for National Grid ESO

Source: · SMART ENERGY INTERNATIONAL · | December 17, 2020

A 5MW ultracapacitor is to be deployed on the GB grid by system operator National Grid ESO to measure the system inertia.

Image: National Grid ESO

The ultracapacitor, set to be the world’s largest, is to be constructed by Spanish technology group Ingeteam under contract to energy technology provider Reactive Technologies.

The ultracapacitor will form part of Reactive’s GridMetrix inertia measurement service, which will provide a real-time view of the power system stability into National Grid ESO’s control room.

Once operational, the ultracapacitor will be used to directly measure inertia by sending pulses of power through the grid, which will be recorded and processed by Reactive’s measurement devices and cloud platform. The technology can be likened to ‘sonar’ for the power grid and provides a step change in accuracy and granularity from the current estimation models.

Increasing levels of renewable and other non-synchronous generation are leading to a decline in the level of power system inertia and the need for new methods of establishing and managing the system stability. Moving towards a system that provides a real-time view of inertia gives greater visibility on the stability of the network, enabling the integration of greater amounts of renewable energy.

“The electricity grid in Great Britain is changing rapidly, with increasing levels of renewable, decentralised power,” comments Rob Rome, head of national control at National Grid ESO.