The world’s first digital energy storage station with a capacity of 100 megawatt-hours has successfully completed its demonstration acceptance testing.
On September 24, the large-scale advanced power storage key technology research and demonstration project—a 50 megawatt/100 megawatt-hour digital energy storage demonstration project—was accepted at the second site of the Three Gorges Ulanqab New Generation Power Grid Friendly Green Power Station in Inner Mongolia. This project marks the global debut of a 100 megawatt-hour level digital energy storage station, indicating a significant advancement of digital energy storage technology in China from research to large-scale engineering application.
During the acceptance meeting, a joint expert group composed of senior industry experts from institutions such as the State Grid Gansu Electric Power Research Institute, the Institute of Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Electrical Engineering at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with representatives from Three Gorges Energy, Three Gorges Land Energy, and China Energy Construction, reviewed the construction and operational assessment report from the research team. After inspecting the system equipment and the operational status of the energy storage station, the experts unanimously agreed that the project had successfully completed construction and debugging, performed well, and met all technical indicators stipulated in the research project contract, thus approving the demonstration project acceptance.
In recent years, as energy storage systems have been increasingly applied at scale, the management and control levels have significantly affected system safety and lifespan. Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration issued the Special Action Plan for the Scaled Construction of New Energy Storage (2025-2027), which aims to enhance the scheduling adaptability of new energy storage systems. This project has transformed the conventional fixed series and parallel connections used in traditional energy storage systems into a digitally flexible and dynamically reconfigurable battery network structure by researching millisecond-level digital energy exchange devices and intelligent reconstruction algorithms for battery networks, thereby supporting the large-scale application of low-cost, long-lifespan digital energy storage technology.
The project, led by the Three Gorges Research Institute in collaboration with Tsinghua University, consists of 46 energy storage containers with capacities of 1.075 megawatts/2.15 megawatt-hours. It includes three core components: a digital energy exchange system, a digital energy storage integration system, and an energy management and intelligent operation and maintenance platform. This system can achieve millisecond-level dynamic switching, rapidly connecting or disconnecting battery components from the grid and enabling quick isolation of faulty or abnormal modules. Based on specific algorithms, it dynamically balances the charge and temperature among modules, employs optimization strategies to extend the cycle life of the battery clusters and the entire energy storage station, and analyzes real-time operational data from the batteries to implement precise control and intelligent operation and maintenance at different levels of the energy storage station.
The project passed the grid connection test and officially commenced operation in June 2024, having operated safely and stably for over a year. It has been selected as a typical case for the green and low-carbon transition by the National Energy Administration and as a new energy storage pilot demonstration project.
The Three Gorges Ulanqab New Generation Green Friendly Power Station, where the project is located, has a total installed capacity of 2 million kilowatts, with 550,000 kilowatts of electrochemical energy storage. This facility serves as a demonstration for the integrated operation of “source, grid, and storage.” By incorporating wind and solar energy storage, it has developed an intelligent joint control center and innovated a “grid-source” coordination mechanism that enhances the flexibility of the grid and improves the region’s ability to accommodate clean energy.
All images in this article are provided by the Three Gorges Research Institute.
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