FPL Targets Huge 10 Year Increase in Solar Battery Storage
Image courtesy of Ed Uthman under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License, resized to 700 x 391 pixels.
Florida Power & Light (FPL), the state’s largest utility company, has set a company target to increase the amount of solar battery storage within its system by a whopping 700% by 2032. The FPL Manatee Energy Storage Center is the hub of it all, and the underlying technology behind it is evolving at an impressive clip.
How FPL Plans to Dramatically Grow Its Solar Battery Storage Capability
FPL owns multiple solar power plants. The largest is a 74.5 MW solar plant, housing 340,00 solar panels, that captures the energy from the sun which is then transmitted to Manatee Energy Storage Center via underground cable and stored for later use, especially during nighttime or bad-weather days when solar power cannot be generated freely.
FPL already has over 500 MW of installed solar battery storage capacity, 80% of which is attributable to the Manatee Storage Center. The company plans to add another 3,200 MW of storage capacity over the next decade.
The Manatee Storage Center went online in Dec. 2021. The facility houses 400 battery modules, manufactured by Samsung, each weighing more than 200 lbs., and each can store about 7 MW. Even now, the facility can power over 300,000 homes for multiple hours.
I definitely applaud FPL’s effort on this. It’s becoming clearer every year that solar power is not viable unless it is accompanied by a storage system of some kind. It’s just too unreliable depending on the weather, time of day, or time of year. It can also be helpful for accommodating afternoon and early morning peaks.
The bottom line is that I believe FPL is ahead of the curve on this, and heck, if any utility should be ahead of the curve on solar power, it ought to be one located in sunny Florida, right? In any case, I, for one, sincerely hope that FPL is able to accomplish its goal of a 7-fold increase in solar battery storage capacity by 2032. From an emergency preparedness perspective, this can only be a good thing.
