Sungrow Leads As Market For Giant Batteries Soars

The global Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) integration market is becoming dominated by five key players as deployments of grid-scale batteries take off worldwide.

That’s the finding of market research outfit Wood Mackenzie, which has announced the results of a review of the market in 2022.

It found that measured by MWh shipped in 2022, 62% of the BESS integration market was held by Sungrow (16%), Fluence (14%), Tesla (14%), Huawei (9%), and BYD (9%).

Image: Wood Mackenzie

In Australia, Tesla would be arguably the most recognisable name in BESS integration. However, Sungrow has also been hard at work in Australia.

Sungrow PowerTitan For 3GW ‘Battery Hive’

Sungrow was recently named as a supplier in the Hive distributed battery project launching in NSW, and is a familiar inverter supplier in large-scale projects like the Kerta solar farm in South Australia.

A Tweet (sorry, post on X) by Sungrow last week uncloaked a previously low-profile project to create a distributed network of solar batteries starting with NSW.

During #AllEnergyAustralia2023, Sungrow and Hive Battery Developments Pty Ltd, supported by Clean Energy Transfer Fund (CETF) were proud to announce their strategic cooperation partnership to provide a #3GWh PowerTitan large liquid-cooled system over the next three years! pic.twitter.com/SheWZFNP4M

— Sungrow (@Sungrow_Power) October 27, 2023

From the All-Energy Australia 2023 conference, Sungrow announced it was working with Hive Battery Developments and the Clean Energy Transfer Fund to deploy 3 GWh worth of Sungrow’s PowerTitan liquid-cooled battery storage.

The Sungrow PowerTitan Image: Sungrow

The system employs a patented liquid-cooled heat dissipation scheme that maintains a temperature difference of under 2.5°C between battery packs.

The liquid cooling system on a PowerTitan battery bank. Image: Sungrow

CETF has a little more information on the project here.

Project Hive involves building giant batteries in NSW, VIC and QLD “where they are needed most and across time horizons that meet local requirements”.

In this media release, Sungrow said its PowerTitan will be Hive’s exclusive choice of battery.

“Moreover, the project is equipped with cutting-edge virtual power plant technology, enabling flexible energy scheduling and active participation in Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) and electricity spot trading, thereby increasing the share of green energy consumption.”

CETF said Project Hive will deploy “an average of 5MW per site”, and its first 40 sites in NSW will provide an aggregate 200MW/800MWh. Queensland and Victoria will follow, with similar growth pathways planned.

Sungrow For Residential

If you are not in the market for MWh scale storage, Sungrow also makes a residential solar battery made up of manageable 3.2 kWh modules. To see what Finn thinks of them, watch his recent Sungrow residential battery installation: