World’s largest battery energy storage facility operational. 4 GWh, more than the Żarnowiec pumped hydro power plant

In the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (China), the world’s largest energy storage facility built using lithium-ion cells was put into operation. It is a 4-hour capacity storage system that, with a capacity of 4 GWh, can deliver energy at a power output of up to 1 GW. For comparison, the upper reservoir of the pumped-storage power plant in Żarnowiec can deliver a total of 3.6 GWh of energy to the grid over approximately 5.5 hours (0.65 GW).

The world’s largest energy storage facility could… and would greatly help us

According to ESS-News, the storage facility was built using lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) cells. It covers about 28 hectares (approximately 700 x 400 meters, likely HERE) and is expected to deliver a total of 1 TWh of energy per year. Connection to the grid and commissioning were successful on the first attempt on August 3 of this year.

Wangbang Digital Energy, the manufacturer and operator of energy storage facilities, invested 3 billion yuan in this project, equivalent to 1.66 billion zlotys. Although there are energy storage systems of similar scale worldwide—such as the aforementioned pump-storage power plants—using Li-ion or even flow batteries, their maximum capacity has usually been in the hundreds of megawatts. This storage facility can deliver up to 1 GW to the grid, meaning if located in Poland, it would rank among the top 8 largest power sources, even surpassing plants like Połaniec and Rybnik.

Or put another way: with the current power demand of 15.6 GW, it could meet nearly 1/16 of our needs for four hours. Or yet another way: the energy stored in it would be enough to charge about 70,000 average electric cars. In other words, 70,000 electric cars — a provincial city — connected via V2G could function in a similar manner.

Let’s return to the energy storage facility: it is equipped with grid-forming inverters, which can independently set the voltage and frequency parameters in the power grid. The storage facility will stabilize the grid by storing excess energy from renewable sources and releasing it when demand peaks.

Transformer station near the storage facility (c) by: ESS-News

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