Polat Energy, Rolls Royce join hands on Turkey’s largest battery energy storage project

Istanbul-based renewables developer Polat Energy has signed Turkey’s largest battery energy storage system supply agreement with Rolls-Royce, a German power solutions company owned by British multinational Rolls-Royce Holdings.

The supply deal is for a cumulative 132 MWh of storage capacity. The system will be installed at Polat’s 118 MW Goktepe wind power plant, located in Yalova in northwestern Turkey. Once commissioned, the facility will be Turkey’s largest battery energy storage system.

Polat Enery is an established renewables developer in Turkey, owning approximately 6% of the country’s installed wind energy capacity with a cumulative power output of around 660 MW.

The company is the owner and operator of the nation’s first and largest wind power plant – the 288 MW Soma wind facility. In early 2024, Polat unveiled plans to retrofit a 4 MW/4 MWh battery energy storage system on the site.

Only a week ago, it announced a partnership with Turkey’s equipment supplier SolarToday and energy storage specialist iNOVAT to install a 12.8 MW/15,176 MWh CATL energy storage unit at its operating 13 MW Aegean wind power plant in Izmir.

Turkey is tipped to experience a rapid deployment of battery storage sytems in the coming years as it seeks to balance its rapidly growing renewables fleet. In late 2023, the country’s Energy Markets Regulatory Authority (EMRA) said that it had given pre-licensing status to 493 projects totalling 25,630 MW of energy storage planned at wind or solar plants.

Mid last year, Turkey’s SHURA Energy Transition Center calculated that natural gas consumption could be reduced by approximately 11.7 TWh and imports worth $369 million could be avoided with the installation of 7.2 GW of battery energy storage by 2035.