Energy supplier Florida Power & Light installs Manatee Energy Storage Center with 132 battery containers.
The energy supplier Florida Power & Light, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, has connected the largest storage photovoltaic system to date to the grid. The construction of the Manatee Energy Storage Center was completed in 10 months. The system consists of a 74.5 megawatt photovoltaic system and the battery system (409 megawatts / 900 megawatt hours). A total of 132 battery containers were installed on a 40 hectare site.
The batteries of the Manatee Energy Storage Center are charged with copious amounts of solar energy during off-peak times and then discharged into the local grid at peak times, when the electricity is most expensive and often also the most carbon-intensive. It will shorten the life of the local fossil fuel power plants and support the utility in its plan to decommission two natural gas power plants from the 1970s with a total output of more than 1,600 megawatt hours.
When the project was first announced in March 2019, the company said it would save its customers around $ 100 million over the entire term by offsetting fuel costs.
Eric Silagy, president and CEO of Florida Power & Light, said expanding his company’s solar and battery storage projects will be cost effective for customers and will help lower bills over the long term. This is the aspect of Manatee’s initiation that makes him most proud.
“It was a landmark year for clean energy in Florida – Florida Power & Light opened the year with the official shutdown of the last coal-fired power plant in the state, and now we’re closing the year with a world record and the world’s largest solar-powered battery commissioning in Manatee.” said Silagy.
Florida Power & Light predicts that by 2030 nearly 40 percent of its electricity will come from zero-emission sources.
In terms of megawatts, the project is larger than Vistra Energy’s 400 MW Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility project in California, which is the largest stand-alone battery system in the world, although Moss Landing is larger in terms of megawatt hours at four hours of running time (1,600 MWh) .
Due to generous tax credits for such projects, several major projects in this category are currently under construction – such as the Daggett project in San Bernardino, California. In addition, the developer Terra-Gen is building the Edwards Sanborn Solar-plus-Storage facility in Kern County, California, which will include 760 megawatts of photovoltaics and 2,445 megawatt hours of battery storage.
