See our previous ‘biggest ‘ roundup pieces for 2023 (here) and 2022 (here).
Click the sub-heading to go to the article.
The full completion and commercial operation of the Edwards & Sanborn project in California was announced in January 2024. The project in Kern County pairs 875MWdc of solar PV and 3,287MWh of battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity, the world’s largest.
An earlier portion of the project came online in 2021, comprising about half of the capacity, but even the additional 1,600MWh on which commercial operations were announced this year would make it the largest we’ve reported on.
The largest BESS project formally revealed by a company that we’ve reported on is Netherlands-based developer Giga Storage’s 2.4GWh ‘Green Turtle’ project, also announced in January. Since then, the project has increased in size to 2.8GWh, and is scheduled to come online in 2028.
Others have been revealed of a similar size, but none larger than 2.8GWh that we are aware of. Energy-Storage.news has reported on larger projects as part of Premium-access exclusive pieces, based on local permitting and development filings in the US, including 4GWh ones from Brookfield in Oregon and Stellar Renewable Power in Arizona.
Rongke Power’s 175MW/700MWh vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) project in China, completed in late 2024, covers two categories in one go – ‘biggest non-lithium/non-pumped hydro project commissioned’ and ‘biggest non-lithium BESS commissioned’, dwarfing both of last year’s picks for each (which were under 20MWh each).
Honourable mentions here include the largest sodium-ion BESS at 100MW/200MWh and the first large-scale project using Energy Vault’s gravity energy storage technology, at 25MW/100MWh, both commissioned in China this year.
Note: If you’re wondering why we haven’t included a pick for ‘Biggest financing package for energy storage’ and ‘Biggest offtake agreement between cell supplier and system integrator’, here’s why. There were too many financings to pick through, many of which were for solar and storage portfolios. And there were many fewer major cell-system integrator offtake deals announced, perhaps pointing to a maturing industry.
