Tesla Megapack 3 to Power Belgium's Biggest Battery Park: 180 Units at a Former Power Plant
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On May 27, 2026, SPIE Belgium announced it had been selected to install and connect 180 Tesla Megapack 3 units at a large-scale battery storage project in Kluisbergen (Ruien), Belgium — the site of a former power plant in the country's Flemish interior. The project, developed by energy company Storm and valued at more than €100 million, ranks among the largest battery storage deployments in Belgian history. Civil construction is already underway; installation and grid connection are scheduled to run from November 2026 through the end of 2027.
The Kluisbergen project is also notable for being one of Europe's first large-scale deployments of the Megapack 3 — the third-generation Tesla stationary storage unit, which offers higher energy density and improved integration efficiency compared to the Megapack 2XL that went online in New Zealand earlier this month. That back-to-back deployment cadence reflects an accelerating European market for utility-scale battery storage, where intermittent renewable capacity is growing faster than the grid infrastructure needed to manage it.
What SPIE Is Actually Building
SPIE Belgium's scope on this project goes well beyond setting down rows of battery containers and plugging them in. The company is responsible for the full electrical infrastructure stack: installation of the 180 Megapack 3 units, medium- and high-voltage cabling, transformer connections, and the construction of a complete 380 kV high-voltage substation to connect the battery park to Belgium's transmission grid.
That 380 kV connection puts the Kluisbergen project directly on Belgium's high-voltage backbone — the infrastructure that moves bulk power between regions and across borders. Connecting at that voltage level means the project can provide grid-balancing services at a national scale, not just local distribution support. It's a different class of project than a behind-the-meter industrial battery or a distribution-level storage system.
| Project Detail | Specification |
|---|---|
| Storage units | 180 × Tesla Megapack 3 |
| Location | Kluisbergen (Ruien), Belgium — former power plant site |
| Developer | Storm |
| Installer | SPIE Belgium |
| Total project value | €100M+ |
| Grid connection voltage | 380 kV (Belgium national transmission grid) |
| Installation window | November 2026 – end of 2027 |
| Generation context | Megapack 3 (higher density vs. 2XL) |
Why a Former Power Plant Site
The choice to build on a former power plant location is not accidental. Retired thermal power stations occupy large, already-industrial parcels with existing 380 kV grid connections — exactly the infrastructure a utility-scale battery project needs but would otherwise have to build from scratch at enormous cost. In Belgium, as across much of Western Europe, these sites represent the most efficient path to deploying large-scale storage fast.
The Ruien power station, which occupied the Kluisbergen site, was a coal-fired plant that operated for decades before closing as Belgium accelerated its phase-out of fossil fuel generation. Repurposing it as a battery park completes a transition that often gets discussed in policy terms but rarely executed at this speed: the same transmission infrastructure that once carried coal-generated power outbound will now carry stored renewable energy to wherever the grid needs it.
"The scale of the project and the complexity of the grid connection make this a particularly challenging undertaking." — Jochen Dewaele, SPIE Belgium Project Manager, May 27, 2026
Megapack 3: The Next Generation Unit
The Belgian project is among the first major deployments of Tesla's Megapack 3 in Europe. The third-generation unit offers improved performance and higher energy density compared to the Megapack 2XL that's been shipping at scale. While Tesla has not published a detailed technical datasheet comparing the two generations on a unit-by-unit basis, the improved density means each container provides more storage capacity in the same physical footprint — which matters when you're building a battery park on a fixed-area brownfield site where land is constrained.
The New Zealand deployment that went online May 25, 2026 — a 100MW / 200MWh system using the Megapack 2XL — showed what these systems can do at the grid level: responding to frequency changes in 0.2 seconds and supplying the equivalent of 44,000 homes during peak demand periods. The Kluisbergen project's specific MW and MWh figures have not been disclosed by Storm or SPIE, but with 180 units and a 380 kV connection, the scale is evidently substantial.
The Bottom Line for Tesla's Energy Business
Two major Megapack deployments announced or completed within the same week — New Zealand's 100MW system going live on May 25 and Belgium's 180-unit project announced on May 27 — reflects a market that is absorbing large-format battery storage at a pace that would have been hard to project even two years ago. European grid operators are under political and regulatory pressure to decarbonize quickly while maintaining reliability, and utility-scale storage is the most direct path to both.
For Tesla, the energy business has been growing faster than the vehicle business for several quarters. The company doesn't break out Megapack margins separately, but large-scale stationary storage projects carry different economics than consumer products: longer contracts, more predictable revenue, and exposure to grid infrastructure investment cycles that run for decades. The Kluisbergen project, with its €100M+ price tag and multi-year deployment schedule, is the kind of contract that shows up in financial results for a long time after the installation is complete.
Photo: Tesla energy infrastructure and power grid / Pexels