On 30 December 2016, South California Edison operators quietly closed a circuit breaker. Without any obvious fanfare, they turned on the biggest lithium-ion battery storage facility ever. The installation has 80-megawatt hours of capacity in its array of Tesla Powerpack 2 commercial batteries. This is a wonderful gift to give the environment because it replaces some high carbon power.
Astounding Numbers in the South California Edison Achievement
The battery array consists of 604,832 lithium-ion battery cells. Tesla assembled them in 10,872 modules of 56 each, and then put them in 604 racks. When on full load, this is sufficient to charge up a thousand Tesla electric vehicles. It could also support two thousand five hundred South California Edison domestic customers in Mira Loma, South California.
The knock-on consequences are immense as Mark Irwin, Southern California Edison explains.
Important Consequences of South California Edison’s Project
The Mira Loma array is one of three the California Public Utilities Commission ordered. This followed on the Aliso Canyon incident. In October 2015, a natural gas reservoir in the canyon started leaking. The event released 107,000 tons of methane gas. Because of this the authorities evacuated 8,000 residents until they capped it.
The facility at Aliso Canyon previously supplied a variety of small, peak-time gas turbines belonging to three utilities. These were South California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Pacific Gas & Electric. Because their peaking gas stations were gone, the decision was obvious. The three companies needed battery arrays to store wind and solar power for peak times.
The Broader Picture of a Partly Solar-Powered Future
The other two California solar battery arrays are making good progress. On the broader scale, Computer World suggests solar and wind capacity will double in emerging economies, especially in Africa. Proof is already there in the form of South California’s 32MWh/8MW Tehachapi Energy Storage Project. They commissioned this earlier in 2016. Batteries have an even brighter project because of South California Edison moving forward.
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Preview Image: Grid Energy Storage
