Huawei Reshapes Utility Scale Energy Storage for a Renewable-Powered Future

SHENZHEN, China, July 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Huawei FusionSolar Smart PV & Large Scale Energy Storage Global Virtual Summit 2021, organized by Huawei and moderated by pv magazine, kicked off on July 22. The event brought together thought leaders in the PV industry to discuss the latest developments and market opportunities in utility energy storage and explore how Huawei Digital Power's smart string energy storage system will make PV a primary energy source in the future.

Huawei Digital Power has accumulated more than ten years of experience in energy storage R&D, and has already shipped 5 GWh+ lithium batteries geared towards various scenarios, including utility-scale solar power plants, residential applications, site power, data center energy, among others.

In his opening remarks, Dr. Fang Liangzhou, CMO at Huawei Digital Power Technologies Co., Ltd., highlighted Huawei Digital Power's vision and prominent features of the smart string energy storage system. He noted, "Huawei Digital Power's vision focuses on Leading Power Digitalization for a Zero-carbon Smart Society. We believe that the key to building a future-oriented power system based on renewable energy is the integration of digital and power electronics technologies."

According to Dr. Fang, to address multiple challenges that beleaguer traditional energy storage systems, Huawei has integrated digital and power electronic technologies in PV and energy storage systems and come up with the smart string modular design, which refines the energy storage system management through the battery pack-level and rack-level optimization. The pack-level optimization improves the charge and discharge capacity by 6%, while the rack-level optimization offers a further 7% improvement. Meanwhile, the innovative distributed heat dissipation architecture extends battery lifespans, and intelligent technologies such as AI and cloud BMS are used to evolve system safety from reactive to proactive.

"Huawei's smart string energy storage solution increases the discharge capacity, reduces O&M costs, ensures safety and reliability, and achieves a 20% reduction in LCOS. " said Chen Guoguang, President of Huawei Smart PV, at the virtual event. "For our solar customers, we are aiming to build a full ecosystem, end-to-end energy solution. Not only in energy generation, but also in energy storage and consumption, further lowering the LCOE and enables PV grid parity to PV+ storage grid parity."

With the falling cost of energy storage and continuous technical innovations, the utility-scale energy storage market is booming globally, with more growth expected to come. Sam Wilkinson, Director, Clean Technology and Renewables, IHS Markit, shared his prediction of the energy storage market with a global audience. "2021 marks the start of a very strong period of growth for the industry. We predict this year that the industry will more than double and will see over ten gigawatts installed for the first time, equating to 28 gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy storage capacity. And this growth is not just coming from major established markets, but from a lot of smaller emerging opportunities as well," said Wilkinson.

Jorge de Miguel, Head of Technical Advisory, Vector Renewables, introduced five large-scale applications of battery energy storage systems (BESS) at the event and pointed that a wide range of BESS services can be used to maximize the total revenue of PV power plants. Another speaker who shed light on the PV+ Energy Storage solution was Felipe Hernandez, Managing Director of FRV X & Engineering. He mentioned that business opportunities abound in both standalone BESS and hybrid PV + energy storage solutions across the world and revealed the various layers in the value stacks of both approaches.

In addition, Hariram Subramanian, CTO at Huawei Smart PV โ€“ Europe, walked the audience through the Huawei Smart String PV-Storage Solution for Utility-scale Scenarios. He emphasized that it is important to create a stable grid with the grid forming concept and adopt the modular design that will make power plants more resilient and robust.

With a high penetration of renewable energy in the electric grid, BESS is set to play an even greater role in accelerating the transition towards a low-carbon future. "We strongly believe that the integration of digital technologies will unleash the full potential of energy storage, driving the industry towards its carbon neutrality goals. Together, we can build a zero-carbon smart society and realize carbon neutrality in the very near future," concluded Dr. Fang.

If you missed the show, you can sign up to watch the full recorded session.

About Huawei

Founded in 1987, Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. We have more than 197,000 employees, and we operate in more than 170 countries and regions, serving more than three billion people around the world.

Our vision and mission is to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. To this end, we will drive ubiquitous connectivity and promote equal access to networks; bring cloud and artificial intelligence to all four corners of the earth to provide superior computing power where you need it, when you need it; build digital platforms to help all industries and organizations become more agile, efficient, and dynamic; redefine user experience with AI, making it more personalized for people in all aspects of their life, whether they're at home, in the office, or on the go. For more information, please visit Huawei online at www.huawei.com or follow us on:

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