The utility company China Southern Power Grid (Southern Grid) has commissioned China’s largest battery energy storage, located in Wenshan, Yunnan province in southwestern China. The lithium-sodium-ion hybrid BESS can store up to 800MWh of electricity per day, which can be used by 270,000 households.
Wang Hui, the head of the station, told the Chinese newsletter Xinhua that the energy storage station uses the latest high-capacity sodium-ion batteries with a top response speed six times faster than other existing sodium-ion batteries. The new sodium batteries are coupled with technologically mature lithium batteries and offer an output capacity of 200MW. The energy storage station covers an area of more than 33,000m2, and it has more than 150 battery compartments and boost-converter compartments. In May 2024, Southern Grid commissioned a 10MWh sodium-ion BESS station in Nanning, Guangxi province.
“The storage station can serve more than 30 wind and photovoltaic plants and stations in Yunnan”, Wang said. The hybrid solution in the energy storage station integrates the advantages of lithium batteries and sodium batteries, further expanding the application scenarios of sodium-ion batteries in energy storage, according to Wan Minhui, a researcher at Southern Grid’s energy storage unit. He also added that the solution can flexibly adjust the charging and discharging modes according to the new energy access, thus balancing the volatility of new energy.
HiNa Battery, a Chinese Jiangsu Province-based, Na-ion power battery maker, said to Xinhua that the energy storage station uses the world’s first high-capacity power sodium-ion batteries made by the company. HiNa was founded in 2017 as the first domestic company based on the Na-ion battery technology spinning off from IOP. In December 2022 its GWh-class sodium-ion battery production line saw its first product roll off the line.
