BYD and CMI sign a MoU, laying the foundation of their close cooperation

The Chinese company BYD, Build Your Dreams (Shenzhen) and the Belgian company CMI, Cockerill Maintenance & Ingénierie signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 18th July to lay the foundation of their close cooperation and their future common developments.

In March 2018,CMI, Cockerill Maintenance & Ingenierie, based in Belgium, ordered one 1.26MW/1.34MWh Lithium battery energy storage from BYD, Build Your Dreams, headquartered in Shenzhen, China. This Lithium-ion battery will be equipped for CMI’s MIRIS energy storage project, one of the Europe’s largest energy storage industrial pilots . Being built at CMI’s headquarters in Seraing (Belgium), MIRIS (Micro Réseau Intégré Seraing) will consists of 2 MWp photovoltaics, 2 types of flow batteries and one Lithium-ion battery for a total of 4.2 MWh of energy storage. CMI is developing the Energy Management System (EMS), brain of the installation, with the help of the University of Liege (ULiège) to optimize the business model of different grid services and to accumulate understanding and experience for long-term development of energy storage projects. The installation will soon be in operation.

MIRIS is BYD’s first project in Belgium and the first revenue stacking pilot project in continental Europe with application of power smoothing.

Based on this first cooperation, BYD and CMI held a MOU signing ceremony on July 18 to lay the foundation for their future cooperation and development of further projects. The signing ceremony also successfully passed the customer site FAT on the same day.

The auxiliary service market in Germany has many similarities with Belgium. With the new breakthroughs in the market, it is believed that the MIRIS project will be of great significance for future developments in Germany and the Benelux. Moreover, BYD and CMI are working on 12 projects together in several countries and they are optimistic about their outcome.