Wärtsilä energy storage building in hybrid power plant (illustration: Wärtsilä)

The technology group Wärtsilä has announced new hybrid power plants, engines+storage and energy storage solutions to power markets globally. These new and innovative solutions provide Wärtsilä’s existing and future customers added value by utilising energy storage technology together with traditional engine based power generation. Wärtsilä also announced it would be offering stand-alone energy storage solutions.

In April 2016, Wärtsilä announced its entry into the solar PV business by introducing solar PV power plants and engines+solar PV hybrid power plants. Today, Wärtsilä hybrid solutions are further extended with energy storage technology. The energy storage market is being created as we speak and gaining momentum. Today, large markets exist for stand-alone energy storage, for example in the USA, United Kingdom and central Europe. Hybrid solutions including energy storage are increasingly becoming financially attractive, for example in areas where fuel prices are high and the penetration of renewable power sources is significant.

By providing hybrid power plants, engines+storage Wärtsilä also introduces energy management system (EMS) to optimise the usage of hybrid power plants. In July 2016, Wärtsilä announced its co-operation with Greensmith, a provider of EMS software. Greensmith’s GEMS platform is the most widely-deployed energy storage software solution enabling the most-advanced and proven energy storage systems in the world. With GEMS, hybrid power plants run in an optimal way at all times ensuring ideal utilisation of both the engines and the energy storage solution.

“We are very excited to introduce these new solutions to our customers. Adding energy storage technology to our existing engine based power plants enables our customers to have instant power while saving fuel, maintenance costs and reducing emissions. With a world-class EMS software platform we solidify our systems integration capabilities” says Javier Cavada, President of Wärtsilä Energy Solutions.

These new solutions provide customer value in many ways, including:

• Optimised spinning reserve – availability for spinning reserve markets even when the engine plant is off-line
• Fuel savings by utilising energy storage and optimising operation of engines in a hybrid power plant
• O&M optimisation and savings
• Regulation compliance
• Reduced emissions

“With these new solutions, Wärtsilä does not only enter the energy storage market but also becomes a systems integrator as we are able to optimise the usage of our hybrid power plants with EMS software” says Risto Paldanius, Director, Energy Storage at Wärtsilä Energy Solutions.

Tags: Wärtsilä