Europe's largest battery switches on: 1,240 megawatt-hours standing by at Hams Hall

Next to the National Grid's Hams Hall substation in England's West Midlands, Europe's largest battery storage project has entered commercial operation: 350 megawatts of power and 1,240 megawatt-hours of storage, built by BW ESS with Sungrow technology and optimised by EDF. It reached full operation just 20 days after first energisation, on budget and ahead of schedule, said CEO Erik Strømsø — and a second phase will lift it to 400 megawatts and 1,424 megawatt-hours. A battery this size is the grid's shock absorber: it soaks up surplus wind and solar power and hands it back in the evening peak, letting clean electricity behave like power that can be called on demand.

SDG 7 · Affordable and clean energy — Mechanism: infrastructure build