State-owned power firm to build 800MWh BESS in Poland

• State-owned power firm PGE Group has gotten regulatory approval to construct a 200MW/820MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Poland.

The project, called CHEST (Commercial Hybrid Energy Storage), will target an ability of no less than 200MW and a power output of 820MWh, making it one of the biggest in Europe, PGE Group stated. It will use lithium-ion batteries.

Until now this year, the project has actually acquired a Decision on Environmental Conditions, the first assurance of a concession for electrical energy storage, and also the first grid link permits, which the business claimed were important landmarks in its advancement. PGE Group chief executive officer Wojciech Dabrowski showed the purpose is to have the project finished by 2030.

He included: "The energy shops (storage) will certainly guarantee safe system assimilation of new renewable energy resources, will certainly contribute to stabilisation of the power system and also will certainly boost the country's energy security."

The project will integrate with the existing 716MW/3600MWh pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plant at Żarnowiec which together will ravel periodic generation of close-by wind farms (shown in PGE Group's map over). PGE Group has consent to develop 3.5 GW of wind near the two sites.

The firm, which is stock-quoted yet majority-owned by the Polish state, likewise said the project would certainly aid the competition of energy markets and also the prepared synchronisation of the Lithuanian, Latvian as well as Estonian power systems with the system of continental Europe.

This is being done with the Harmony Web link project, an interconnector making use of a 300km-long wire between Poland and also Lithuania. Although the project predates the Russian invasion of Ukraine, its goal is to allow the Baltic states to shift themselves away from the IPS/UPS system which is centrally regulated by Russia.

The launch of the BESS project may have been made possible by current regulative and legal adjustments passed by the Polish Parliament around the meaning of energy storage space, a move covered by Energy-Storage. information at the time.

One more notable energy storage project in Poland is gigafactory business Northvolt's energy storage space system (ESS) assembly and also manufacturing facility, which just recently bagged a share of EUR1.8 billion in EU financing.