Increasing revenues of offshore wind farms with co-located energy storage systems

Co-located onshore and offshore energy storage systems exhibit the potential of diversifying and increasing revenue streams of offshore wind farms. However, these systems should be designed and sized considering the power generation profile, the route to market of these assets, i.e. power trading strategy, and dynamics of the various segments of the power market. In this study, the feasibility of deploying subsea hydro-pneumatic storage systems was investigated. It was seen that if a 50MW capacity system with a storage duration of 4 hours is deployed in an offshore wind farm of 1000MW capacity, the wind farm can potentially participate in the day-ahead and ancillary services markets more confidently from a risk perspective. The relatively higher volatility in these markets presents an opportunity to improve economics of these offshore wind projects as long as costs can be kept under control.