The Manatee Energy Storage Center, among the world’s largest solar-powered battery systems announced thus far in the US, is slated to be built by 2021 by Florida Power & Light Company (FPL), the utility owned by NextEra Energy.
The 409 MW storage project will be four times larger than the largest battery system currently in operation. Once the Storage Center becomes operational, It will be able to distribute 900 megawatt-hours of stored energy generated by utility-scale solar, enough to power 329,000 homes for two hours during peak time. The large-scale solar-plus-storage project will accelerate the retirement of two natural-gas-fired plants that FPL calculates will save consumers $100 million over time.
Also, FPL rolled out a program to install 30 million solar panels by 2030. That could generate more than 10 gigawatts of capacity in Florida. greentechmedia, energy-storage news