Struggling to make use of boom in energy storage

Strong appeal: A worker walks past wind turbines at an electric factory in Zhongshan, in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. Investment in grid-connected batteries in China surged 364% last year. — Reuters

ROWS of what look like thin, white shipping containers are lined up on a barren dirt field in China’s Shandong province.

Filled with batteries, they form a 795 megawatt (MW) plant that can hold up to one million kilowatt-hours (kwh) of electricity – enough to power 150,000 households for a day, making it China’s largest such storage facility when it was connected to the grid last Saturday.