| Summary: | The installed capacity of electricity produced from solar power has increased over the years and will do so even further. A lot of companies are investing in so-called solar parks to create large scale electricity production from solar power. With intermittent energy sources such as solar power comes challenges for the electricity net where storage systems can play an important role to handle these challenges. Storage systems connected to renewable energy can also be a way to increase the economic benefits of a system. This study investigates whether a lithium-ion battery system connected to a solar park is economically profitable, and in that case under which circumstances. This is done by focusing on a solar park in Uppsala, Sweden, owned by Vasakronan AB. Different grid-connected services provided by the battery that could generate income were identified and chosen for the study which were arbitrage, a local flexibility market and frequency regulation. The usage of the battery for each and a combination of these services were modelled and simulated in Matlab (2020). Each individual case was created as its own model for three different battery capacities (2, 4 & 8 MWh). To investigate whether a case was profitable or not, the internal rate was calculated for each model. This was also done for a longer lifetime of the battery and for lower investment costs as a sensitivity analysis. The results show that a system of this kind is only profitable for one case which is if a 2 MWh battery is used for the frequency regulation services FFR and FCR-D. This results in an internal rate of 6% which is higher than the rate of return of 5% that Vasakronan requires. The conclusions of the study is that it is difficult to make an investment in a battery system that is only charged from a solar park profitable.
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