BYD Energy Storage has launched new products. At the International Digital Energy Expo, just as last year when BYD Energy Storage released the 14.5MWh energy storage system Haohan, along with the GC Flux PCS and GC Master EMS to build a GW-level grid-forming energy storage solution, this year BYD Energy Storage has iterated its new products and introduced the GW-level grid-forming energy storage solution 2.0, which includes the utility-scale standard GC Block (62MWh), GC Flux PCS 2.0, and GC Master EMS 2.0.
A year later, what new breakthroughs have been made in BYD Energy Storage's new products, and what new product trends do they represent for the industry?
▍Up to 62MWh, Equipped with 1980Ah Cells
Targeting the diversified new business models in the next decade of new energy storage and the era of GW-level power plants, BYD Energy Storage has globally debuted the utility-scale standard unit, GC Block. Designed with standardization, this unit covers full-duration applications and is tailor-made for scenarios such as independent energy storage, renewable energy storage allocation, computing-power and electricity coordination, zero-carbon parks, and flash-charging storage allocation. For a 1GWh energy storage power plant, it enables multiple solution combinations:
● 7.5MW/15.5MWh: 65 sets required for 1GWh, corresponding to 2-hour energy storage (Editor's note: last year's 14.5MWh Haohan energy storage system required 69 sets)
● 7.5MW/31MWh: 33 sets required for 1GWh, corresponding to 4-hour energy storage
● 10MW/62MWh: 17 sets required for 1GWh, corresponding to 6-hour energy storage
Calculated based on the maximum tier of 10MW/62MWh, a 1GW energy storage power plant requires only 100 sets of GC Block. Compared with conventional industry solutions, the number of Block sets is reduced by 37.5%, cable sets by 68.1%, foundation sets by 19.6%, and site area by 17.2%.
The GC Block is equipped with 1980Ah dedicated energy storage cells. Adopting the stacking process, these cells achieve a major leap to ultra-large capacity cells for over 2 hours (applicable to 4-6 hours) (350Ah in 2022, 377Ah in 2023). The increase in cell size directly results in the total number of cells in the entire plant dropping from 3 million to under 1 million (calculated based on the optimal site layout for 1GW/6.2GWh). Battery management complexity decreases by 69.4%, maintenance workload is reduced by over 60%, and installation and commissioning workload is reduced by over 18%.
This solution can achieve minute-level black start for the entire GW-level plant, supporting 7×24-hour all-weather off-grid operation. It is fully compatible with mainstream industry PCS, supporting both centralized and string configurations.
The simultaneously upgraded GC Flux PCS 2.0 covers a full range of capacities from 1.25 to 15.6MW. The standard 20-foot container achieves a maximum of 10MW, with a peak conversion efficiency of 99.5%. It features a 3x overload capacity for 10 seconds, adopts a large string design, and allows direct management of a single cluster.
The brain of this system, the GC Master EMS 2.0, integrates high-precision AI prediction with an overall prediction accuracy of 98.5% and a regulation accuracy of 6‰. It supports GW-level cluster online access—requiring no manual monitoring, as the system independently completes calculation and dispatch.
Overall, BYD's GW-level grid-forming energy storage solution 2.0 can improve the comprehensive efficiency of the entire plant by 2.7%, increase the lifetime energy discharge by 3.1%, and optimize the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) over the full lifecycle by 5.5%.
▍GW-Level Power Plant Era: Top Three Energy Storage Giants Make Their Moves Alongside Tesla
Looking at the previously launched Megablock and Sungrow's PowerTitan 3.0 liquid-cooled energy storage system, it is evident that given the scaling up of energy storage power plants to the GW level, products from leading manufacturers are converging on the same form factor—the minimum unit sold is no longer a single cabinet, but a replicable section of a power plant.
Currently, application scenarios such as computing-power and electricity coordination, zero-carbon parks, flash-charging storage allocation, and renewable energy storage allocation are seeing diversified demands. Meanwhile, when the scale of energy storage power plants reaches the GW level, it brings challenges such as complex design, long construction cycles, and high management difficulty.
The answer from manufacturers is to simplify complexity: the platform handles universality, while the modules handle variations. BYD's GC Block mainly offers three solutions: 7.5MW/15.5MWh, 7.5MW/31MWh, and 10MW/62MWh; Sungrow's PowerTitan 3.0 covers three versions: Flex, Class, and Plus; Tesla's Megablock integrates four Megapack 3 units, transformers, switchgear, and other equipment into one, reaching a capacity of 20MWh.
Looking at the engineering side, Tesla delivers 1GWh within 20 working days; Sungrow achieves factory pre-installation and pre-commissioning, enabling 1GWh to be grid-connected in as fast as 12 days; BYD compresses a 1GW power plant into 100 sets of GC Block, reducing the installation and commissioning workload by over 18%.
Using replicable standard blocks to meet non-replicable scenario demands is the solution for the GW-level era. Competition is no longer about whose solution is more unique, but whose standard modules can be reused across more scenarios.
Note: The content of this article is solely for sorting out public information in the energy storage industry, industrial research, and objective analysis. The listed companies mentioned in the text are only for reference as industry chain cases and do not constitute any investment basis. The market has risks, and investment requires caution.