Energy storage for Hungary - NaS battery for wind farms

Hungary has no significant energy storage on their power grid but with the growth of renewable generation the need for it is increasing. Therefore the transmission system operator meets a considerable challenge from day to day to keep the system in balance as the total instantaneous generation and consumption must always be equal. The aim of this article is to present the current situation of the energy storage and also to propose applications of a specific battery in Hungary. The battery is of the recently developed sodium-sulfur (NaS) type produced first by the Japanese NGK Insulators Ltd. The NaS was chosen after the examination of all kinds of energy storage possibilities. The article explains why batteries should be implemented and then why NaS have been chosen for further investigation by counting their advantages and disadvantages besides the estimated chance of their realization in the Hungarian system. During the project the author made calculations and simulations in Matlab to estimate the size, investment and operation of a NaS battery storage system to be planned for an existing wind farm in Hungary.