Sungrow will supply a 16MW/64MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) to a customer in Israel, which will lower emissions and improve efficiency at one of the country’s biggest power plants.
The energy storage division of the China-headquartered PV inverter manufacturer announced the deal with Israeli infrastructure solutions company Afcon yesterday.
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Sungrow will supply its newly-launched liquid cooled BESS unit for utility-scale applications, ST2752UX, together with the company’s SC5000UD-MV power conversion system (PCS), integrated in enclosures. Sungrow will also provide maintenance services for the battery equipment.
It will be installed at the 912MW Dalia Power Station combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant, which is responsible for 8% of Israel’s entire electricity production.
The batteries will improve efficiency and reduce the runtime of the plant’s turbines, allowing generators to be turned down quickly and improving the speed and flexibility of their response.
Afcon’s EPC subsidiary is taking on the project for independent power producer (IPP) Dalia Power Energies, which owns and operates the gas plant. Afcon EPC Division is taking the lead on planning, procurement and execution as well as operations and maintenance (O&M) of the overall project.
The deal announcement comes not long after Sungrow was awarded an even bigger project in Israel. The company said at the beginning of this year that it has been contracted to supply 430MWh of BESS by developer and IPP Enlight Renewable Energy.
That project will be installed in two phases, the first of 230MWh and the second of 200MWh.
Sungrow’s country manager for the UK and Ireland, Andy Lycett, spoke with Energy-Storage.news for an interview published this week on the technology trends the company is expecting to see in energy storage in 2022 and over the next few years to 2030.
Lycett said liquid cooling thermal management of the type used in the ST2752UX model will be a prevalent technology and could begin to dominate the market this year.
“This is because liquid cooling enables cells to have a more uniform temperature throughout the system whilst using less input energy, stopping overheating, maintaining safety, minimising degradation and enabling higher performance,” Lycett said.
Israel could need 8GWh of storage by 2030
Israel is targeting getting 30% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, equating to about 12GW of solar PV. Its national electricity authority, PUA, modelled an expectation of a required 2GW/8GWh of energy storage to reach that goal.
PUA has made a start on deployments with two tenders held in 2020 for solar-plus-storage. The first saw 168MW of solar PV and 672MWh of battery storage contracts signed, the second 608.95MW of PV and more than 2,400MWh of storage. Prices in the second auction for four-hour batteries paired with solar came in at a clearing price of 17.45 Shekel cents per kilowatt-hour (US$0.0544/kWh at that time).
In a webinar hosted by Energy-Storage.news in November in partnership with energy storage expert consultancy Clean Horizon in November ahead of the second auction, PUA regulatory department head Yossi Sokoler said that the 8GWh figure was not a target as such, but the modelled amount the authority believed Israel needed to integrate that 30% share of renewables.
Israel is likely to reach that figure well ahead of 2030, Clean Horizon CEO Michael Salomon commented.
