US battery manufacturer Exide Technologies is investing in a solar power facility coupled with VRLA battery storage at its production plant in Castanheira do Ribatejo in Portugal.
Another solar facility will be installed at Exide’s recycling plant in Azambuja, Portugal.
The solar-plus-storage system will pair 500kWh worth of Sonnenschein A600 VRLA from GNB— a division of Exide Technologies— with solar. The two sites will have a combined total of around 10,000 solar photovoltaic panels, with a total generating capacity of 3.8MWp. The company said this was equivalent to the power requirements of more than 2,000 homes.
Exide said the production plant solar-storage system will be one of the largest self-consumption generation units with storage in Europe, “showcasing the potential for systems of this kind to be deployed at scale”.
Exide’s investments at its Castanheira plant in Portugal include the recent start of a “new multi-million AGM Network Power production line”.
Stefan Stuebing, Exide’s president of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said: “Our Castanheira plant is becoming one of the most advanced of its kind anywhere in the world. More and more companies will rely on self-generated power backed by a BESS in years to come, especially in energy-demanding sectors like manufacturing.”
In 2018, Exide moved to tighten its grip on the motive power market by acquiring fast-charge tech pioneer Aker Wade Power Technologies. Aker Wade designs and manufactures advanced charging systems for industrial forklifts— and the acquisition saw the firm’s chargers become part of Exide’s GNB portfolio.
