In the UK, Chinese inverter and storage system maker Sungrow has completed one of Europe’s largest energy storage projects. The Minety power plant, with a capacity of 100 MW/100 MWh, is designed to offer grid frequency control services as well as maximize the usage of renewable energy sources.
Penso Power built two 50 MW batteries for the project, which was sponsored by China Huaneng Group and CNIC Corporation. Initially, the project consisted of a single 50 MW battery, which was finished in 2020, followed by the addition of a second battery in 2021.
A large-scale power outage occurred in the UK about two years ago as a result of a short-term reduction in network frequency. Following that, the government prioritized the building of huge storage facilities in order to avoid a repeat of the incident. The utilization of some of the big storage devices constructed at the time really assisted in preventing the country’s electrical supply from completely failing.
Sungrow provided both nickel-manganese-cobalt and lithium-iron-phosphate battery systems with a high degree of integration for the Minety big storage facility so far. Shell Energy Europe Limited, the Anglo-Dutch fossil fuel giant’s gas and electricity subsidiary, has committed to acquire power from the project under a long-term power purchase agreement but the details have not been released officially.
