On Tuesday, October 8th at 09:47, the 1400MW transmission cable linking the Norwegian and UK grids tripped. This was an unplanned outage, which caused the grid frequency to spike to over 50.4 Hz.
What happened next? Did the Nordic region experience blackouts or system disruptions?
FCR-D market to the rescue
The short answer is no. Batteries (BESS) and fast-reacting flexible resources keep electricity flowing smoothly and this is how.
When the frequency spiked, the FCR-D down market kicked in within seconds. This market product is specifically designed to support the grid quickly in these types of unplanned, disturbed instances.
The graph below, an example of a Flextools customer battery storage site, shows how the FCR-D dynamic response works. Note that the battery response is both proportional and dynamic, meaning that the installed EMS+ control system charges or discharges based on the severity (magnitude) of the deviation from 50Hz and in the proper direction (up or down). In this case, the battery responds proportionally and is charging since the grid frequency was too high i.e., too much production or not enough consumption.
Congratulations to the Flextools customers who supported the Nordic grids during this unplanned outage!
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