On August 12, 2021, Florida Power and Light released an update on the progress of construction at the Manatee Battery Energy Storage Center project. Fox 13 Tampa Bay ran a related story giving viewers a video tour of the work in progress. Watch the story here. Written news stories also appeared on the Power Engineering website and in the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

When complete the battery system will consist of 132 energy storage containers organized across a 40-acre plot of land that’s the size of 30 football fields. The FPL release explains that the first of more than 50,000 battery modules have been installed. Each battery module can store the equivalent of 2,000 iPhone batteries. When complete the Manatee Energy Storage Center is set to have a 409-megawatt (MW) capacity, delivering 900 megawatt-hours (MWh) of solar energy – enough to power approximately 329,000 homes for more than two hours.

Completion will also allow FPL to retire the existing power plant in Manatee County. The project is expected to save $50 million and reduce 1 million tons of carbon.

Irby Construction is proud to be a part of this monumental project and its continued partnership with FPL. The scope of our work at Manatee Battery Energy Storage Center is detailed in our project profile.

Featured photo courtesy of FPL

On June 23, 2021, Power Engineering published a story on their website featuring an update on the construction progress being made at Florida Power and Light’s (FPL) Manatee Battery Storage Project. The FPL release on which the story is based marks the milestone of the first battery storage unit installations. When complete, the facility will be the largest solar power-battery storage facility in the world. Irby expects to complete construction later this year.

The article includes some fun facts about the recently installed storage container which is the first of 132 units to be installed. For example, each unit holds approximately 400 battery units and weighs approximately 38 tons. And each battery module is the equivalent of about 2,000 iPhone batteries. The units will store the extra solar energy produced by the FPL Manatee Solar Energy Center.

FPL announced the project in March of 2019. Read about the project scope and details in their release.

Irby’s scope of work is detailed in our project profile. You can also see additional news media coverage on the project in Energy Storage News, Power Magazine, and Daily Energy Insider.