SMA has announced it will be supplying its Sunny Central battery inverters for an energy storage project in Korea that will be the largest of its kind in the world.
The company says it will deliver 24 Sunny Central Storage 1000 battery inverters and system technology next month for the 200MW KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation) project. The inverters will be used with large lithium-ion batteries to supply 24 MW of power conditioning output.
The project is considered extremely important for Korea given the country is unable to import the balancing power needed to stabilize utility grids the way it is done in other countries.
“With on-grid storage systems, the Sunny Central Storage battery inverters provide a full range of grid management services such as frequency control or grid congestion management,” explained Volker Wachenfeld, Executive Vice President Off-Grid and Storage at SMA. “This reduces ongoing reserve power capacities and ensures grid stability.”
The deal is quite an achievement for SMA, with only Korean companies qualifying for other portions of the 200-megawatt project.
KEPCO intends building 500 megawatts of energy storage systems in total by 2017 to help strengthen the nation’s energy security.
In other recent news from SMA, the company announced early this month it was the first non-local inverter supplier to surpass 1 gigawatt of solar inverter sales in Japan.
“SMA’s state-of-the-art production lines in Niestetal satisfy the highest quality standards and requirements in the Japanese market and SMA has therefore developed a strong reputation for reliability and quality,” said John Susa, SMA Executive Vice President Sales Asia Pacific.
SMA enjoys a similar reputation in Australia where SMA solar inverters are a popular choice for residential and commercial solar power installations.
SMA has been developing inverters for wind and solar applications for more than three decades and is also active in the emerging home energy storage sector. The SMA Sunny Home Manager Flexible Storage System is already available in Australia.
The company had been doing it tough in recent years; partly due to increased competition, but it recently again raised its sales and earnings forecast for this year and is optimistic about 2016.
