For those not reading the article, it's battery storage. Specifically "Samsung SDI batteries". This is a great use case to see how well grid-scale battery storage will perform at the point of power generation in comparison to things like pumped water or thermal.
I'm not a huge fan of the format of the article, but I <i>am</i> a huge fan of a solar plant that has sufficient storage (and mindset) to provide power when the sun isn't shining. The more like this, the better, imo.
Note that the cost per MWh is less than most fossil generation, and far less than the cheapest nuclear (per Lazard’s most recent LCOE analysis).<p>It’s clear that solar and battery storage can now provide affordable base load power, and can be deployed rapidly (this project is set to turn up in 2022).<p><a href="https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2018/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...</a>
Here's the vendor datasheet for the batteries:
<a href="https://www.samsungsdi.com/upload/ess_brochure/201902_Samsung%20SDI%20ESS_EN.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.samsungsdi.com/upload/ess_brochure/201902_Samsun...</a><p>It doesn't say the specific chemistry but it shows a chart estimating 6000 100% charge/discharge cycles at 1C until it hits 80% capacity.<p>So for this system that'd be 16 years of full cycles till it wore down to being "only" a 240MWh system.<p>In reality they'll probably cycle it less aggressively than that (95/5 or 90/10) to meet the expected 25 year lifetime of the overall system.
I'd just like to point out that there are solar plants that can generate power after sunset too. Solar thermal plants can store their heated working fluid in an insulated container and use that to power their heat engines later on.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#CSP_with_thermal_energy_storage" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#CSP_w...</a>
Layman Science Wizard recently explained to me that pumping water up into a storage tower (using solar-based energy) and then using the gravity-drop to generate electricity again (when the sun is gone) was also very effective. A natural battery of sorts. No batteries to wear out, neither. Feasible?
Just to point out a subtle distinction I hadn't caught reading the headline: the station is designed to only deliver its power at night. That's the 100% in the headline. The battery storage apparently lasts 7 hours, so there's still a good five hours of the average night not served by the plant.
> Engie says that the Samsung SDI batteries which it has chosen for the energy storage solution will be able to deliver electricity for up to seven hours<p>For anyone who whats to know what SDI stands for it is "Samsung Display Interface".<p><a href="https://community.cadence.com/cadence_blogs_8/b/breakfast-bytes/posts/samsung-battery" rel="nofollow">https://community.cadence.com/cadence_blogs_8/b/breakfast-by...</a>