Brazilian company develops first energy storage project focused on renewable sources. The “storage wind” project will play a major role in the Brazilian energy transition.

Currently, one of the biggest challenges faced by Brazil is the generation of electricity. The lack of rainfall in recent years has increased the cost of distributors and overloaded hydroelectric systems. On the other hand, there was also an increase in investment in wind turbine farms and painéis solares, considered clean sources of energy in the energy transition. With this, another challenge arises, which is to energy storage generated by these sources.

Brazil has a new energy transition project – Large-scale energy storage

It is important to note that the energy storage can help in other ancillary services, such as frequency control and automatic recovery, in addition to mitigating the impact of instability from intermittent sources, such as solar, which contributes to reducing the demand for operation of thermoelectric plants.

The company ISA CTEEP, a specialist in transmission and present in 17 states in Brazil, where 30% of the electricity transmitted in the country travels, recently inaugurated the first large-scale energy storage project in batteries in the transmission system. The purpose of the initiative is to avoid activating its diesel generators at peak hours.

In a way, this undertaking is linked to what the current president of the BRICS Bank, Dilma Rousseff, stated at the opening of the UN in 2015. At the time, the president highlighted that Brazil did not have “wind storage” technology. Now it seems that it is finally possible, or rather, to store wind energy and even solar energy to distribute it at peak times, during the summer, as a reinforcement to the electrical grid.

Find out how the project to “store wind” works

The proposal of ISA CTEEP is to use a system that has a set of lithium batteries manufactured by Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd (CATL), the largest producer of Lithium Iron Phosphate (LIFEPO4 or LFP) automotive batteries in China.

Each battery has a capacity of 30 MW of power and can provide electricity for up to 120 minutes, totaling an energy storage capacity of 60 MWh. It is the first time that the country uses this technology, which can be used in more than 29 kilometers of circuits, including owned and jointly controlled assets, and in 133 substations with voltages of up to 550 kV.

The initiative presented by the company, in addition to generating less pollution, also banishes noise from generators, as well as the need to transport diesel to keep the equipment running, putting Brazil one step ahead in the energy transition.

In addition, this project contributes to the decarbonization of the system. The company estimates that, in two years of activity that “stores wind”, it will be possible to avoid the emission of approximately 1,2 thousand tons of Greenhouse Gases (GHG). In this way, ISA CTEEP aims to carry out works in areas of environmental preservation, such as the Serra do Mar State Park.

Solar and wind energy can receive more investments

According to the president of ISA CTEEP, Rui Chammas, the new technology facilitates the use and encourages investment in renewable sources, insofar as it acts to compensate for the variability of intermittent energy generation, which allows expanding the integration of wind and solar sources to the National Interconnected System (SIN) and, consequently, mitigate emissions of polluting gases.

It is worth remembering that the Federal Government, with the aim of promoting clean energy sources, zero taxes levied on solar panels. Among the taxes that will not be charged on the equipment are the import tax, tax on industrialized products, Cofins and PIS.