LONDON, November 27 (WNM) - Lightsource BP has become the first company in the UK to provide a reactive power service from a solar plant at night. In a successful plant trial, the company used one of its solar plants in East Sussex to provide a reactive power voltage support service at night. The reactive power service was delivered through UK Power Networks’ distribution network and has the potential to help National Grid ESO manage voltage on the transmission network.

During the day, solar inverters convert DC power of a solar panel to conventional AC power which can be fed into a commercial electrical grid. Since solar farm inverters are not in use during the night, they are an under-used resource for National Grid ESO and local operators to tap into.

The test was coordinated with UK Power Networks’ control engineers who monitored to ensure network safety and reliability with no adverse customer impact. National Grid ESO confirmed that this is the first night-time grid support service from a solar asset in the UK.

The trial follows three years of testing and development and forms part of the joint National Grid ESO and UK Power Networks ‘Power Potential’ project, which aims to create a new reactive power market for distributed energy resources (DERs) in the South East.

Lightsource BP worked with UK Power Networks and National Grid ESO on Power Potential to deliver this important milestone in an initiative which has the potential to provide up to an additional 4 GW of power capacity in the South East region of the UK.

Kareen Boutonnat, Lightsource BP Chief Operating Officer, comments: “The success of this trial clearly demonstrates that innovation is key in addressing the future growth of the energy sector. With electricity demand increasing so rapidly we have to be in a constant state of evolution in order to solve the problems of the future. Right now, we have proven that solar plants can play a larger role across the electricity network – even at night”.