Chinese Automaker BYD Unveils World’s Largest Battery for Renewable Energy Storage

BYD is already being known as China’s main producer of electric cars. They also produce their own ferrous batteries for the cars, which they now use to store wind and solar power in what represents the world’s largest renewable energy storage based on batteries.

Having the size of a football field, the huge battery bank can store 36 megawatt-hours of power. The State Grid Corporation of China is the project’s beneficiary, seeking to improve their renewable installation’s efficiency by 5 to 10 percent.

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No wind No problem with giant battery bank

A huge battery bank connected to a wind farm was officially commissioned today in a project that makes wind power more closely resemble a traditional power plant.

Two divisions of energy project developer AES today said that the 98-megawatt Laurel Mountain wind facility in West Virginia is now connected to 32 megawatts worth of lithium ion batteries from A123 Systems. It’s the largest project to couple wind power with lithium ion batteries, according to the company.

The shipping container-size batteries will allow AES to gradually adjust power delivery to the grid up and down, rather than have a more sudden drop-off in power due to a change in wind. The variability of wind and solar can make integrating large amounts of renewable energy challenging to grid operators.

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