Construction officially started on September 17 at Green Turtle, a battery storage site in Dilsen-Stokkem, Belgium. Developer GIGA Storage says it will be the largest energy storage facility in Belgium. The site will use 640 Tesla Megapack 3 units. It is rated at 700 megawatts of power with 2,800 megawatt-hours of storage.
Tesla is the EPC partner on the project. Tesla handles the engineering and construction, supplies the batteries, and provides long-term maintenance. The site will connect directly to Belgium's 380 kV high-voltage grid through a new substation that grid operator Elia is building. GIGA Storage puts the total investment at about 700 million euros. Commissioning is scheduled for the end of March 2028.
The project's main job is grid balancing. GIGA Storage says the capacity will be offered to Elia and market parties to keep supply and demand in balance and to reduce grid congestion.
Megapack 3 is now built in Texas. On August 6, Tesla announced that Megapack 3 units were rolling off the line at its new Megafactory in Brookshire, just west of Houston. Tesla says the plant went from groundbreaking to operation in 16 months. It has a designed capacity of 50 gigawatt-hours a year dedicated to Megapack 3. Each unit stores about 5 megawatt-hours, which is roughly 28 percent more than the Megapack 2 XL it replaces.
This Belgian project will not change anything on the Texas grid. The idea behind it still applies here. Large batteries help grid operators handle sudden swings between supply and demand. That kind of stability keeps lights, servers, and phone systems running without a blink.
No grid is perfect, though. Storms, equipment failures, and brief sags still reach local offices. Your own backup plan has to cover the gap until power returns or a generator takes over.
- Put servers, firewalls, switches, and the phone system on a UPS sized for a clean shutdown.
- Test UPS batteries on a regular schedule. Replace them before they reach the end of their rated life.
- Pair the UPS with a standby generator or a battery system if an afternoon of downtime would cost real money.
- Give internet and phones a backup path during an outage, such as cellular or satellite failover.
- Write down who shuts down each system and in what order.
Stored power buys time, whether the site holds 2.8 gigawatt-hours or protects one server closet.
The next outage will not wait for a budget meeting. For Canton companies, the smart move is to find out now how long the network, phones, and servers would actually stay up. My I.T. Consultants offers a Free Assessment that reviews UPS runtime, generator hand-off, and failover for the equipment that matters most. Call 903-675-5431 during posted weekday hours. Contract clients are covered around the clock.
