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Japanese companies are building some of the world's biggest battery systems to address one of solar power's biggest problems–its volatility.
Handling the surges in power when the sun shines and storing that energy for use when it is cloudy or dark is a major headache for solar power producers and the utilities they supply.
Mitsubishi Electric Corp and NGK Insulators Ltd. are assembling a 50,000 kilowatt battery system for Kyushu Electric Power Co to study ways to better accommodate solar power.
A slightly smaller, 40,000 kilowatt battery system is under construction in Minami Soma, north of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, for Tohoku Electric Power Co. to conduct similar research.
The government is financing both projects at a total cost of ¥31.7 billion ($257 million), a government official said.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Informative) by fnj on Saturday June 27 2015, @01:56PM
This is a butterfly fart in the wind. 40,000 kW is 40 MW, which is 0.04 of a single power plant (1 GW), or 0.00014 of Japan's installed electric energy capacity (282 GW in 2010).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2015, @05:31PM
Common batteries are a couple of thousand milliamp-hours, so yeah these are giant.
(Score: 1) by steveha on Tuesday June 30 2015, @05:27PM
As the article clearly says, this is a pilot project to study how to use giant batteries to stabilize the grid when using solar.
I agree that the pilot program doesn't have much capacity compared to Japan's needs, but it seems big enough to figure some stuff out.