Enel Peru inaugurated the first high-capacity battery system in the country

Enel Peru inaugurated the first large capacity Lithium Ion Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) in Peru, BESS Ventanilla. The purpose of the infrastructure is to deliver and absorb energy to and from the electrical system to compensate for frequency deviations in the interconnected system, which is essential to improve the quality of the energy delivered to customers and increase the stability of the National Interconnected Electrical System (SEIN). In addition to being the first infrastructure of its kind in the country, BESS Ventanilla is the Enel Group's first in Latin America.

This system, whose investment was approximately USD 10 million, is located in Callao, within the Ventanilla Thermal Power Plant, has a site size of 2,500 square meters, 14.6MW of incorporated power and 469.4MW of effective power.

“The BESS Ventanilla is the first milestone in the battery market in Peru and will allow demonstrating the virtues of this technology, opening the possibility of new services that will benefit the system and customers. In this sense, it would be important that the sector's regulations accompany its development and allow exploring additional functionalities to the Primary Frequency Regulation (RPF)”, noted José Manuel Revuelta, Country Manager from Enel Peru.

For its part, Salvatore Bernabei, Director of Enel's Global Power Generation business line, he commented: “This project is a very important milestone for Enel's global generation area, as it is not only our first storage system in Peru, but also the first time globally that we have installed batteries in a combined cycle thermal power plant. We are sure that this will be a successful combination that we will also implement in other countries to build the generation matrix of the future”.”

For the commissioning of this project, different permits were obtained, such as the Pre-operational, Operational and Connectivity Permits requested by the Economic Operation Committee of the National Interconnected System (COES), as well as a Technical Report approved by SENACE, of the Ministry of the Environment.

About high-capacity batteries

Batteries are one of the technological developments that are currently driving the global electricity market to provide Complementary Services to the electricity system, thanks to the flexibility of the equipment and its ability to store large amounts of energy, which currently contribute to the reliability and stability of the electricity grid and will benefit end customers by improving the quality of electricity service.

Batteries are considered the future of clean electricity generation, since they can store it and thus allow the management of blocks of energy that could be used to meet customer demand requirements through improvements in the dispatch curves of the different technologies, without incorporating additional generation (the electricity supply is better redistributed). This technology offers several uses: primary and secondary frequency regulation, peak shaving, energy shifting, optimization of transmission grid investments, among others.

The Enel Group has already successfully implemented similar batteries worldwide, in countries such as Italy (30 MW Stand Alone), United Kingdom (25 MW for RPF), Germany (22 MW for RPF) and Spain (20 MW for RSF). Additionally, in Colombia there is a 7 MW BESS (to provide RPF), which came into operation days after the Ventanilla BESS.

This initiative reaffirms Enel's commitment to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, since the project contributes to meeting SDG No. 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), because it is the first battery in Peru and represents a boost to innovation.