The largest battery energy storage system (BEES) in continental Europe has been recently inaugurated in Belgium by developer Corsica Sole, replacing an old World War II turbojet generator used since the 1950s.
The system consists of 40 Tesla Megapacks and has a total capacity of 100 MWh, while the peak output is 50 MW.
That’s another big BEES in Europe installed by Tesla, which in November launched also a 196 MWh/98 MW system in the UK (this one is the largest in Europe).
With the new battery system, it will be possible to add more renewable energy to the grid, while at the same time noise and pollution levels will be reduced.
According to IEEFA, this is the first out of three new BEES that will be launched in Belgium by the end of the year.
“The system will help to ensure the stability of frequency in the European electricity network. The main way battery systems do this is through participating in Frequency Control Reserve (FCR), which will be gradually replaced by a pan-European service called automatic frequency restoration reserve (aFRR).”
It seems that Tesla is really accelerating its lithium-ion battery energy storage system deployment in Europe, but those systems are still much smaller than some of the ones deployed or under construction in the US.
Building a BEES-arm as a side business to the electric vehicle battery production was a perfect move by Tesla because it enabled Tesla to take advantage of the gigafactory scale (a few years ago, the BEES market was very small).
Soon, Tesla will engage a higher gear with the launch of the all-new battery energy storage system factory in Lathrop, California, which is expected to produce up to 40 GWh of BEES annually.
Expansion of BEES is seen as the crucial element to expand the share of renewable energy sources, which are characterized by high fluctuations of energy generation. It means that providing clean electricity for electric vehicles basically requires a parallel high-scale deployment of battery systems – both to support the renewable energy sources and large fast charging stations.
