MET Group inaugurates Hungary’s biggest battery energy storage system, MOL to build solar park

Met Duna Energiatároló, a unit of the MET Group, an energy company based in Switzerland with Hungarian roots, has inaugurated a 40 MW / 80 MWh battery storage at the Dunamenti Power Plant in Százhalombatta (South of Budapest). Operation has started at the storage system.

The investment is supported with over HUF 4bn from the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). Huawei Technologies is manufacturing the battery storage units and the general contractor for the project is Forest-Vill. The transformer was made by Ganz. The MET Group had consolidated revenue of EUR 17.9bn last year.

MOL to build solar park, battery energy storage system in South Hungary

Hungarian oil and gas company MOL has started the construction of a 20 MW / 40 MWh energy storage in Algyő (South Hungary). The battery energy storage project will receive a HUF 2.7bn grant from the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and HUF 5.6bn in investment incentive funds from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Peter Archibald Schubert, managing director of Mol Exploration and Production Hungary said.

• MOL signs agreement for onshore exploration opportunity in Azerbaijan

The solar park and the energy storage system will reduce carbon emissions by 13,000 tonnes, he said. The solar park will generate sufficient energy to provide for the annual consumption of 22,500 local households, and the battery energy storage system will help flexibly manage the annual consumption of 7,300 households, he added.

• If not economics, then what? Hungary’s reluctance to ditch Russian oil

State secretary for energy transition of the Energy Ministry Viktor Horvath noted that Hungary had built more than 8,000MW of solar capacity in the past 5-6 years and one-quarter of the electricity generated in the country came from renewable sources last year. The government has earmarked over HUF 180bn on supporting renewable energy and energy storage, he added. As a result, energy storage capacity reached 115MW at the end of last year, more than triple the amount one year earlier, he said.

The next tender, currently under public consultation, will allocate HUF 50bn supporting businesses creating energy storage and renewable energy capacities, Horvath said. The power plant’s general contractor is Alteo Energiaszolgáltató.