Rwanda gets largest off-grid battery system

Solar storage units being prepared for Rwanda

Therefore German commercial storage system manufacturer, Tesvolt, has been awarded the contract to supply the world’s largest decentralised off-grid storage system, which acts as a mini-grid during power cuts.

The lithium storage system, with a total capacity of 2,8MWh, will provide water pumps in an agricultural project in Rwanda’s eastern province with emergency power. The 3,3MW solar power plant and the storage system are being engineered and constructed by the international system integrator, IdeemaSun.

An important criterion in the call for tender was that the storage system is able to absorb electricity from the PV power plant and release it again as quickly as possible. Only very powerful off-grid storage systems can supply the necessary emergency power several times per day, and there are only a few storage systems on the market which meet these requirements. The entire storage solution had to be as reasonably priced as possible,” explains Simon Schandert, the company's director of engineering.

Tesvolt has developed storage systems which use prismatic battery cells, which enable high charging speeds through their particular design and chemical composition. The intelligent control system ensures that each individual cell is charged and discharged at the optimal rate for a particularly long-service life.