World's Largest Virtual Battery Plant

[Marina Schwarz + 1,576]

The world’s largest “virtual battery plant” is now operating in the Arabian desert

Interesting.

[NickW + 2,714]

46 minutes ago, Marina Schwarz said:

The world’s largest “virtual battery plant” is now operating in the Arabian desert

Interesting.

Good that they opted for Sodium - Sulphur, neither of which face the same supply bottlenecks as Lithium. In any case energy density of  batteries is not generally issue in static locations.

[markslawson + 1,058]

The story is of interest, and I see they are using different material and spreading their locations, but like the bulk of stories about batteries leaves out basic details like costs and revenue, and even the rational for the battery - what's its main purpose? It would also have nice to be told the life span of these different types of batteries. I would query one point - the story says it can power the UAE grid for six hours if need be - say what? Its output is 100 MW - that's doesn't sound like much even for a comparatively small nation. I think someone got carried away on that one.. 

[NickW + 2,714]

23 minutes ago, markslawson said:

The story is of interest, and I see they are using different material and spreading their locations, but like the bulk of stories about batteries leaves out basic details like costs and revenue, and even the rational for the battery - what's its main purpose? It would also have nice to be told the life span of these different types of batteries. I would query one point - the story says it can power the UAE grid for six hours if need be - say what? Its output is 100 MW - that's doesn't sound like much even for a comparatively small nation. I think someone got carried away on that one.. 

Sounds like BS in the article to me

According to this

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ae.html

UAE's annual electricity consumption is 113 TWH

The Battery stores 648 MWH

If my maths serves me correctly at this late hour thats approx 3.6 mwh a second (time averaged over the year) so that battery, putting aside output limitations can keep the UAE going for about 3 minutes.