RWE Renewables has ordered integrated battery energy storage systems (BESS) from LG Energy Solution for two large-scale solar-plus-storage projects being built in the US.
RWE Renewables, subsidiary of European utility group RWE, did not specify which projects in its current pipeline will be equipped with the LG Energy Solution systems, but did say they will include a combined 200MW / 800MWh of battery storage.
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The supply contract is for integrated BESS made up of pre-assembled battery enclosures that can be transported to the project site, using modular 2.8MWh units of LG Energy Solution’s New Grid-scale Energy Storage System solution. They will be delivered in the second half of 2022, RWE Renewables said in a release yesterday.
RWE will provide Energy Management System software for the projects, as well as carrying out project design, modelling and system integration. LG Energy Solution senior VP of ESS business Youngjoon Shin said that the supply contract comes after the two companies collaborated successfully on two smaller projects in Texas four years ago. Shin said that LG looked forward to a “long-term collaboration with RWE in the US”.
“We are extremely pleased to form the partnership with the RWE team to supply batteries for their two flagship projects in the world’s fastest growing energy storage market,” Youngjoon Shin said.
LG recently celebrated its role as supplier of battery racks to Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California, the world’s biggest battery storage to date. The Moss Landing project was expanded this summer to 400MW / 1,600MWh and was developed by power generation company Vistra Energy.
Meanwhile, RWE Group is currently building 1GWh of energy storage projects around the world, announcing two projects totalling 128MWh last month in its home country of Germany which will be paired with run-of-river hydroelectric power plants. The US is a particularly strong market for the company, it said yesterday, with over a third of the Group’s renewable energy capacity in the country, with solar, storage and wind projects which it owns and operates.
Last month the company secured an offtake agreement with energy supplier Constellation for its Big Star project (200MW of solar PV with 80MW / 120MWh of battery storage), currently under development in Texas. RWE Renewables is also building Hickory Park, a 200MW solar farm with 40MW / 80MWh of battery in Georgia, which at the time it began construction in November was the company’s largest solar-plus-storage project in the US to date. That project is being equipped with a DC-coupled solar-plus-storage solution by Wärtsilä Energy.