GE has released a containerized energy storage product with a competitive advantage for installation time.
The 1.2-megawatt, 4-megawatt-hour Reservoir system marks a new entry into the standardized, large-scale battery market. It reflects a strategic shift at GE’s storage practice, which recently reorganized after an initial foray into battery manufacturing and a detour in commercial and industrial energy services.
Reservoir sounds like many other containerized battery solutions already available from companies like Fluence, BYD, Mitsubishi, LG, Samsung and others. The goal is to lower costs to developers by standardizing the product and factory-testing the enclosures for quality control.
What GE does differently is ship the containers fully loaded.
“We will fully assemble and test the equipment in a controlled environment and drop ship to the site fully assembled,” said Eric Gebhardt, vice president and strategic technology officer at GE Power.
Typically, containerized battery systems ship without the battery cells inside, due to weight, safety or quality concerns. GE bucked the trend by designing a box that can travel with batteries in place but disconnected. A technician with a hot stick can flip a switch onsite to reconnect the electrical circuit and get the system operational again.
That could cut installation time in half, Gebhardt said, because it eliminates time-intensive battery installation onsite.
This appears to be the first large-scale battery design with this capability.
The 50 percent cut to installation time “seems plausible and realistic,” said Ravi Manghani, energy storage director at GTM Research. That still leaves other tasks like putting in a transformer, wiring different containers together and connecting to the broader grid.
“These assets can come online and start making money faster than another system that has to be assembled onsite,” Manghani noted.
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