A large battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Hubei, China, using sodium-ion technology is set to be completed this year.
Construction has already started on the 50MW/100MWh project in Qianjiang, Hubei province, according to Shanghai Metals Market (SMM).
The BESS project was highlighted in a three-year plan released by the Qianjiang Municipal People’s Government in November 2023, which said it should be ‘completed’ before the end of 2024.
Its three-year plan said the project would be 100MW/200MWh while SMM and other outlets’ articles this past week reported it to be 50MW/100MWh.
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Either way, it would be by far the largest BESS online using sodium-ion technology, which many in the industry agree is the most commercially mature alternative technology for BESS to lithium-ion.
The sodium-ion BESS is being developed by Datang Hubei Energy Development, which is owned by the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), SMM told Energy-Storage.news. It said the project would total investment of RMB200 million (US$27.8 million).
It is part of a wider, national-level effort to build large-scale energy storage demonstration projects, including those using flow battery technology. Two years ago, Energy-Storage.news reported on the first phase of a 200MW/800MWh vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) coming online.
Recently published statistics from China’s National Energy Administration said that the country’s capacity of so-called “new-type energy storage” hit 31.39GW by the end of 2023. The administration said that 22.6GW was deployed in the past year alone, with lithium-ion BESS technology making up 97.4% of new capacity additions.
Read all our coverage of developments in the sodium-ion battery sector here.
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