The Pillswood BESS site was officially unveiled on 5th March 2023 at a stakeholder event organised by Harmony Energy, which brought major international and local players together to tour the facility and discuss the advancement of decarbonisation across our electricity grid. The £75 million project, funded by Harmony Energy Income trust and delivered by Harmony Energy Ltd, utilises Tesla Megapacks to store as much as 196MWh of electricity, enough to power around 300,000 homes for two hours.
The seventy-eight Megapacks, installed on a raised platform and connected to the grid by forty 2.8MVA 33kV/480V Wilson T2 Ecotrans Distribution Transformers, are also responsible for providing essential ancillary services to the grid such as Firm Frequency Response and Dynamic Containment. Upon attending the opening, Wilson Power Solutions’ Energy Policy Manager, Ayah Alfawaris, commented: ‘It’s extremely gratifying to see this site come to fruition, we’re very proud to see our transformers in the flesh next to Tesla Megapacks, fashionably, in white supporting this landmark project.”
With BESS touted by many as the key to unlocking the full potential of renewable energy, the Pillswood project marks a significant step forward in the role of battery energy storage systems in diversifying the UK’s energy supply by providing balancing services to the grid such as demand support to combat inefficiencies. Crucially, the site sits adjacent Creyke Beck substation and shares the same connection point proposed for the world’s largest windfarm, Dogger Bank, which is set to go live this year and capable of generating 3.6GW of renewable energy when fully operational.
Erika Wilson, Wilson Power Solutions’ Manager Director, commented: “We are delighted to work on this important green energy project with Tesla and Harmony Energy, a fellow Yorkshire company. Over the past few years, we’ve seen an increasing demand for transformers to support renewable and BESS projects. Sites such as Pillswood have benefited from custom transformers made to the technical requirements of their specific project. BESS and the support they provide to renewables build the confidence needed to accelerate decarbonisation.”
