There aren’t enough letters in the alphabet to classify this monstrous battery China’s built. D x 1000? Not even close. With arrays larger than a football field, it can store a whopping 36 megawatt hours of power.
Apparently China is gung-ho on embracing renewable energy sources, and to really take advantage of solar arrays and wind farms you need to be able to store up power when there’s an abundance, for times when there isn’t. So electric car maker BYD and the State Grid Corporation of China built the massive battery as part of a larger energy project in the country’s Hebei Province that’s capable of generating 140 megawatts of renewable energy. And they’re both part of an even larger initiative to create a more reliable smart power grid for the entire country.
According to Popular Science’s calculations, 36 megawatt hours is enough juice to power somewhere in the neighbourhood of 12,000 homes for an hour. Or give you a full day of talk time on your iPhone 4S. That’s right, I went there. [CleanTechnica via Popular Science]