BYD’s First Energy Storage Project in Poland Begins Operations

BYD has started up its first grid-scale energy storage project in Poland with the official opening of its new 1.26MW/2.52MWh energy storage facility.

The system, which was shipped into Poland in May, came online just a few months later in September, highlighting just how quickly large-scale stationary storage deployments can be brought online. The installation is the first in the Polish market and will be operated in partnership with ML System S.A.

“This will create a lasting change, bringing a huge market share to new energy companies,” BYD Renewable Energy Business Development Director Mr. Guo Bin said. “We believe that this project will be able to provide valuable lessons for power market reform and at the same time further consolidate our position in the Polish energy storage market.”

The new energy storage project will be combined with a 1 MW solar power plant, also sold by BYD, that will operate in conjunction with the new energy storage project to enable peak shaving and create a more stable grid for the country. The solar plus storage installation serves to address growing demand for electricity in Poland, which is adding approximately 1,000 MW of new power capacity per year, on top of an installed base generating capacity of 350,000 MW.

“Based on BYD’s good reputation and popularity in the European market, we actively invited BYD to participate in the very first application of battery energy storage in Poland’s power market,” ML System S.A. Project Manager Mr. Marcin Pyzik said.

Poland has a significant amount of work to do in the energy sector if it is to have any hope of meeting its EU carbon emission reduction targets and commissioned the “Energy Policy of Poland until 2030” plan in 2009 to address the gap.

Part of that plan stipulates that a full 15% of the energy usage in the country be from renewable sources by 2020, across three major areas: transportation, electricity generation, and heating/cooling. The latest report on the topic shows Poland being on track to exceed its commitment by 0.5% thanks to significant progress in renewable electricity generation, but there’s a hot debate about renewable sources of electricity there (wind & solar versus biomass) that we won’t dive into here.

BYD began as a battery company and over the last 2+ decades has grown into a full-service new energy company with complementary solar and automotive businesses. BYD has already supplied an estimated 462MW/463MWh of energy storage installations to customers in the US, Germany, France, Japan, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. (www.chinatrucks.com)

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