TotalEnergies Unveils France’s Largest Battery Storage Facility

French petroleum refining company TotalEnergies has launched the largest battery-based energy storage facility in France, the company claimed in a recent official statement.

Located at the Flandres center in Dunkirk, this site, which responds to the need for grid stabilization, has a power capacity of 61 MW and a total storage capacity of 61 megawatt hours (MWh). It is made up of 27 containers of 2.5 MWh, designed and assembled by Saft, TotalEnergies’ battery affiliate which notably develops advanced batteries for industry.

This project was selected as part of the long-term tender launched by the French Electricity Transmission Network (RTE) in February 2020, where TotalEnergies was awarded battery storage capacities in France. The full commissioning of the site follows the start-up of a first 25 MW unit in January 2021.

The company states that the commissioning of this site marks a new step in the development of TotalEnergies’ battery energy storage capabilities.

With this project, TotalEnergies bellieves to be contributing to:

• ensuring sufficient electricity supply in the national grid, especially during peak winter periods,
• guaranteeing grid security by providing fast reserve services1,
• supporting the production of renewable energy by allowing more green electricity to be integrated into the grid.

“We are proud of the commissioning of the largest storage site in France and to be able to support RTE, the grid operator, in guaranteeing the stability of the grid and thus enabling the increased development of renewable energies”, said Vincent Stoquart, Senior Vice President Renewables at TotalEnergies. “With the success of this project and Saft’s expertise in batteries for energy storage, TotalEnergies intends to deploy its storage solutions in countries where the Company is actively developing renewable energies.”

At the end of 2021, TotalEnergies’ gross renewable electricity generation capacity is more than 10 GW.  The company aims to continue expanding its business to reach 35 GW of gross production capacity from renewable sources and storage by 2025 and then 100 GW by 2030.