The world’s largest battery is coming to California. Recently, Southern California Edison (SCE) revealed the winners of a massive 250 megawatt energy storage procurement round, one that could set new standards for incorporating distributed and customer owned energy assets into grid operations. The procurement represents a potential turning point for utilities.
GTM Research analyst Cory Honeyman stated, “Winning bids from the solicitation include a diverse array of grid-scale storage, behind-the-meter storage, distributed generation PV, thermal storage, demand response, energy efficiency and natural gas peaker plants.
While there have been broad procurement plans in the past, never before has a utility procured such a diverse cross-section of behind-the-meter and grid-scale solutions in one solicitation.”
Honeyman suggests, “This type of solicitation marks an emerging trend in utility procurement, where utilities move away from technology-specific and RPS-led procurement to a more unified approach in which solar PV, demand response, energy efficiency and natural gas peakers compete in blended solicitations that are part of long-term procurement plans or integrated resource plans.”
The device will be integrated into the region’s bulk power grid and store excess power. In return, the charged battery will deliver a sustained flow equivalent to more than 100 million common AA alkaline batteries, or a whole fleet of 17,000 Nissan Leafs.
AES will design and build the 100-megawatt facility on its land in Long Beach, alongside the Alamitos power plant just off Interstate 405.
AES already manages the largest fleet of grid batteries in commercial service, with “more than 200 megawatts of storage resources in operation and construction, according to the firm. The company claims to have more than 1 gigawatt of energy storage in development across the globe. Parent company AES Corporation had revenue of $16 billion last year.
Battery Facts
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The battery is 100 megawatts, able to provide 4 hours or 400 megawatt-hours of battery-based energy storage
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The project needs to be completed by January 1, 2021
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The battery will be installed in one large building at the Alamitos Power Center in Long Beach, California
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AES is providing services under a twenty-year power-purchase agreement
AES suggests that the energy storage resource “acts as both generation and load, enabling more than twice the flexible range of a traditional peaker plant on the same transmission infrastructure.”
John Zahuranick, president of AES Energy Storage said, “It’s the first time that energy storage has been included in all of the services for local capacity and given a fair playing field. It really is a transition to a new era, with technology providing new solutions with no emissions and no water use that are highly flexible. It helps us have an unbreakable grid.” He added, “The storage we’re delivering can do a lot more than balancing intermittency.”
“We’ve been developing this approach over many years. We put the first lithium-ion system on the grid in 2008,” he said. “We come from the power plant perspective — trying to scale this technology,” adding, “Energy storage can be smaller and modular — and we built an architecture to take advantage of the modularity of batteries. One advantage is that you have a massively parallel array, which gives a high level of reliability and design advantage and a common set of controls.”
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