- The Israeli Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure has announced four large-scale battery storage projects to drive the country to deploy more energy storage.
- The four plants will be built close to an existing national power transmission line in a region close to industrial areas, including some that already exist and others in development.
The Israeli Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure has announced four large-scale battery storage projects to drive the country to deploy more energy storage. The buildout will total 800MW/3,200MWh, comprising four facilities of 200MW, each with four hours of storage duration. Future projects will be built in stages according to the network’s needs and leverage different storage technologies.
Like many other countries, Israel’s great need for energy storage is driven by a requirement to integrate growing shares of renewable energy on the grid. This is exacerbated by Israel’s status as an energy island, despite its small land mass being without interconnection to neighbouring countries and essentially needing to be self-sufficient.
Steps already taken by the country include tenders for large-scale and off-grid solar-plus-storage plants, with a 2020 competitive solicitation leading to awards of contracts for 777MW of solar PV with 3,072MWh of battery storage. A subsequent 2021 round awarded contracts to 609MW of PV and 2.4GWh of energy storage. The four plants will be built close to an existing national power transmission line in a region that is also close to industrial areas, including some that already exist and others in development. There are also plenty of solar PV plants near the 71-acre site earmarked for the BESS projects.
Energy and infrastructure minister Israel Katz said the projects would be a “first of their kind” for Israel in terms of standalone large-scale storage resources “with a significant capacity” and represent part of an “overall policy and reform” that the minister is leading in the Knesset. Katz said, “Storing the energy in this way will allow us to increase the production of renewable energies, improve the reliability of the electricity supply and stabilize the functioning of the network steps that will directly contribute to the economy’s growth.”