Technical
The most suitable energy storage technology for the factory of GSK in Irvine (Scotland) is Flow batteries, reaching with large capacities more than 81% hours of autonomy over a year.
The suitable selection of the maintenance period for the different on-site generation technologies reduces the % of the energy imported from the grid by around 10%.
The Liquid Air Energy Storage technology with a capacity of 200 MWh increases the % of hours of autonomy of the factory of GSK by more than 20% over a year.
An increase of 20% of the demand of the process in the factory would produce a % of hours over a year of autonomy of 17.35%. It is a big drop when compared with the 70.32% achieved by the LAES technology with the same capacity of 200 MWh with the current demand.
The factory can be autonomous at least 27.95% of the hours over a year when turning off the Wind turbines. The effect of no Biogas is lower, achieving autonomy 54.42% of the time. However, if the Biomass plant is switched off, the factory cannot achieve autonomy at any time.
Economic
Without the implementation of energy storage technologies the net import/export income is, -£360891.
Both Liquid Air Energy Storage and Electrochemical batteries with capacities ranging from 2.5MWh to 1,000 MWh result in an overall loss in terms of net import/export income.
Between the range of capacities of 2.5MWh and 200MWh Flow batteries improve the net import/export income when compared with no storage. However, when capacities of 500MWh and 1,000MWh were modelled a loss was generated.
Therefore, it is suitable to state that the most suitable storage technology based on import/export income for the GSK site in Irvine (Scotland) would be Flow batteries.
It is clear that if a suitable storage incentive were in place, then the economic feasibility would be greatly increased.
Environmental
Liquid Air Energy Storage reduces the % of CO2 emissions imported from the grid by almost 25%.