New becomes new – WEMAG battery storage power plant in Schwerin renews IT and control technology

WEMAG’s battery storage power plant in Schwerin-Lankow went into operation in 2014 after completion of the highly innovative plant and has been successfully marketing balancing power ever since. Built in two construction stages, it will provide the energy market with 10 megawatts of primary control power. At the time of commissioning, the WEMAG plant was considered the largest battery storage power plant in Europe.

In the meantime, it has relinquished this title to newer, much larger plants. But WEMAG’s storage power plant is one of the battery-based plants with the longest operating experience on the market.

This is very positive, as the experience gained can be profitably used for new WEMAG projects. At the same time, however, it means that the components of the system are now “getting on in years”. This applies to both hardware and software.

Challenges of Technology Aging

Efforts to keep the system at the highest technical level are made particularly challenging by the fact that both hardware and software in the versions originally installed are sometimes no longer available, are no longer updated or the original suppliers are no longer on the market.

At the same time, the recent past has been characterized by a very dynamic development in the area of IT security in general and the requirements of TSOs in particular. The demands placed on the system technology of the battery storage power plant are high – and rightly so, because protection against security threats and high availability of the systems in the grid must have priority.

Necessity of renewal

For this reason, WEMAG has decided to make significant changes to the IT, the associated infrastructure and the software for the control, monitoring and operation of the battery storage power plant. The plant architecture and the plant technology itself, i.e. the batteries, the inverters and transformers, the medium-voltage switchgear and the secondary technology, will remain in their existing design. Rather, the focus of the activities is on computing technology and software.

Contracting of SCADA-Automation

WEMAG Batteriespeicher GmbH & Co. KG has commissioned SCADA-Automation GmbH from Berlin with the implementation. The SCADA team specializes in energy automation technology with a focus on battery storage and has excellent knowledge of Younicos technology. (At the time, Younicos had built the plant on behalf of WEMAG.) With this, SCADA-Automation fulfils WEMAG’s central objectives for the retrofit.

Retrofit requirements

First of all, a deep understanding of the currently implemented control and control integration of the entire system is essential in order to enable a smooth transition to a new solution. In addition, WEMAG had very specific ideas about the requirements to be implemented in the course of the “plant rejuvenation”:

The design of the plant control system and the power plant control station for the battery storage power plant in Schwerin-Lankow to be renewed is to be based on the solutions already used for the WEMAG battery storage systems (WBS) in order to enable the WEMAG Group to control and market all battery systems in the company portfolio on a uniform basis in the future.

In addition, all work for the conversion and renewal must be carried out during ongoing plant operation in order to ensure continuous use of the power plant.

For SCADA automation, this means developing a concept that connects to the “world” of WEMAG battery storage systems during software development and, in project implementation, enables fully redundant plant operation until the “final” changeover to the new system, while at the same time ensuring that the functionality and interaction of all existing and new components is absolutely guaranteed for this time.

Implementation

As a result, a project plan is now being implemented, in which tasks are worked through in five sub-projects.

• The delivery and installation of the new IT and infrastructure as well as the associated software form the starting point and the “backbone” for all further work.
• After completion of this phase, the unit control for the battery-inverter combinations is changed.
• This is followed by the renewal of the system control system (EZA controller).
• In the fourth sub-project, the focus will be on replacing the power plant control room.
• The final step is commissioning. In addition to the commissioning of the power plant control station, the functionality of the external connections to the WEMAG grid control center and for marketing must also be ensured. In addition, the PRL compliance is verified.

Conclusion and outlook

Only after completion of all tests and proof of the required functionalities is the redundant plant operation terminated and the new system takes over the power plant control completely.

The project will have a total duration of about one year. The result will be a renewed battery power plant in Schwerin, which will serve the balancing energy market with modern technology for many years to come.