GIGA Storage, a Netherlands-based large-scale energy storage company, has started building Green Turtle, a 700 MW / 2,800 MWh BESS at Dilsen-Stokkem in Belgium. The project is the company's first energy storage facility in the country and extends its European portfolio of large-scale storage. GIGA Storage calls it Belgium's largest, and current planning puts commissioning at the end of March 2028.

Green Turtle will consist of 640 Tesla Megapack 3 batteries using cobalt-free LFP chemistry. Tesla was selected as EPC partner and handles engineering and construction, the supply of the batteries and long-term maintenance, while STADSBADER CONTRACTORS carries out the civil works for Tesla.

Preparatory earthworks and roadworks began in mid-August. The installation of batteries, cabling and high-voltage equipment follows over about a year and a half of work, running up to commissioning.

Once in operation, the facility will connect directly to a new high-voltage substation that Elia is building on the Rotem industrial estate beside its 380kV Van Eyck-Gramme line. It will store surplus power from solar panels and wind turbines and feed it back when demand exceeds supply, and its capacity will be offered to Elia and to market parties that keep the grid in balance and reduce congestion. At peak times, the installation can supply electricity equal to the daily consumption of about 385,000 households, according to GIGA Storage.

The project also brings the former zinc factory site of the Société Anonyme de Rothem back into use. "This site has a long industrial history and was of great significance to Dilsen-Stokkem for many years," said Mayor Sofie Vandeweerd. "It is wonderful that a place so strongly connected to our industrial past is now being filled with economic activity again, but this time focused on the energy supply of the future."

Around the facility, a zone of 26,650 sq mts is being planted with native vegetation, and the company said that construction emissions will be offset six months after commissioning.