GE Renewable Energy Wins Battery Storage Contracts In California & South Australia

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General Electric profits have been hammered recently because a large part of its business involved supplying generating systems powered by steam. As the world transitions to renewable energy, steam turbines are less and less in demand and GE’s business has suffered as a result.

But the company is reinventing itself as a provider of grid scale energy storage systems and has recently received two important contracts — one to provide a total of 100 MWh of battery storage at three locations in California and another for 300 MWh of storage in South Australia.

GE Battery Storage In California

According to Renewable Energy News, Convergent Energy and Power has selected GE Renewable Energy to supply battery storage systems for three projects in California with total capacity of 100 megawatt-hours. GE will also provide long term service support for those installations. The three projects will bring GE’s total battery storage capacity in operation or under construction to 495MWh.

Convergent chief financial officer Frank Genova says his company has “a track record of developing trailblazing energy storage assets that advance the energy storage sector. We’re proud to partner with GE Renewable Energy to provide for local area reliability and support the growth of renewable energy in California.”

GE Renewable Energy chief executive Prakash Chandra adds, “Energy Storage is going to be a major component in the energy transition to more renewable generation, and our collaboration with Convergent in California is a stepping stone in demonstrating the industry’s commitment to deliver more reliable and dispatchable renewable energy.”

GE Battery Storage For South Australia

Green Tech Media reports that GE Renewable Energy has been awarded a contract to install a 100 MW/300 MWh battery storage system as part of the 200 MW Solar River project. The Australian market offers one of the fastest-growing opportunities for hybrid generation, says Gianpaolo Giuliani, the company’s global sales director.

“The system is leveraging GE’s Reservoir technology, with a high energy density modular architecture, proprietary string-level battery control, and a hybrid controller which leverages our vast history of controls experience to appropriately orchestrate the solar dispatch and the battery storage output,” he adds.

South Australia is also home to the Hornsdale battery installation supplied by Tesla. Although that battery can currently claim to be the largest in the world, that title won’t be valid for long as larger and larger storage facilities are constructed around the world. Like the Hornsdale battery, GE’s Solar River battery will provide fast-reacting capacity for a state grid dealing with rapid renewables growth and baseload coal retirement. With its longer energy duration, the GE system will help turn solar power into a dispatchable resource.