World’s Largest Energy Bank To Be Installed In Japan

Hokkaido, located in northern Japan, is famous for its favorable weather and wind condition. This makes the area an extremely suitable place for building an energy bank.

At this time of the year, since the average wind speed can reach 10kmph, a substantial but unstable amount of wind power can be generated. Therefore, North Hokkaido Wind Energy Transmission Corporation aims to build transmission equipment as well as powerful energy-storage system, which can support groups of large-scale wind turbines of over 500MW. This can provide a sufficient and stable amount of energy for the area.

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation will monitor and control the power conditioners and battery of the project. The company believes that this will become the world’s largest energy-storage system ever. It can produce a 240-MW output and 720-MWh rated capacity.

For comparison, last year, Elon Musk’s Tesla built the 129 MW Hornsdale Power Reserve, a battery storage facility, which has always been promoted to be the largest storage project. The Hokkaido storage system will definitely change this. But, it is not until March 2023 will the project be launched. And until then, there may be other projects being set up claiming they can reach the same capacity as the Hokkaido one. To name a few, there are the 800MWh Vanadium Flow Battery (VFB) in the Dalian peninsula in China, 720MWh ‘brine4power’ project from EWE Gasspeicher and the collaboration of UET and Rongke Power.

These energy projects play important roles in promoting the use of different renewable energy forms as the main power supply. Countries are now extremely interested in these kinds of projects because of their abilities in reducing the instability in renewable energy production.

The largest battery in South Australia of Tesla when fully charged can provide power for 30,000 homes per hour. By paying back a third of its cost within one year since the operation, the $90.6 project has been praised constantly. With its financially and environmentally benefits, energy banks are undoubtedly going to be the answer for the global energy demand.