For Southern California Edison (SCE), building
a smarter grid started many years ago with smart meters and upgrades in
distribution equipment. Today, the company takes another leap
forward with the opening of the largest battery energy storage project
in North America — the Tehachapi Energy Storage Project — to modernize
the grid to integrate more clean energy.
The demonstration project is funded by SCE and federal stimulus money
awarded by the Department
of Energy as part of the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The 32 megawatt-hours battery energy storage system features lithium-ion
batteries housed inside a 6,300 square-foot facility at SCE’s Monolith
substation in Tehachapi, Calif. The project is strategically located in
the Tehachapi
Wind Resource Area that is projected to generate up to 4,500 MW of
wind energy by 2016.
“This installation will allow us to take a serious look at the
technological capabilities of energy
storage on the electric grid,” said Dr. Imre Gyuk, energy storage
program manager in the energy department’s Office of Electricity
Delivery and Energy Reliability. “It will also help us to gain a better
understanding of the value and benefit of battery energy storage.”
The project costs about $50 million with matching funds from SCE and the
energy department. Over a two-year period, the project will demonstrate
the performance of the lithium-ion batteries in actual system conditions
and the capability to automate the operations of the battery energy
storage system and integrate its use into the utility grid.
“The Tehachapi Energy Storage Project is a significant milestone for SCE
and for energy storage in California” said Doug Kim, director of
Advanced Technology at SCE. “Grid-scale energy storage is an integral
part of our company’s Storage Portfolio Development Framework that will
contribute to optimizing grid performance and integrating more renewable
energy resources. This demonstration project will give us a significant
amount of insight into the operational capabilities of large-scale,
lithium-ion battery storage.”
Primary goals of the project are to demonstrate the effectiveness of
lithium-on battery and smart inverter technologies for improved grid
performance and to assist in the integration of variable renewable
energy resources like wind and solar power.
The battery system supplied by LG
Chem is comprised of 604 battery racks, 10,872 battery modules and
608,832 individual battery cells – the same lithium-ion cells installed
in battery packs for General Motors’ Chevrolet Volt.
“The successful commissioning of the Tehachapi Storage Project marks a
key milestone for LG Chem in delivering large-scale energy storage
solutions,” said Sung-Hoon Jang, vice president of the Energy Solution
Company at LG Chem. “As a turnkey solutions provider, LG Chem looks
forward to its continued collaboration with SCE during the next two
years of system operation. The role of energy storage in the electric
grid will continue to increase with the growth of renewable energy and
distributed energy systems and our collaboration with SCE will provide
key insights for current and future energy storage projects.”
About Southern California Edison
An Edison International (NYSE:EIX) company, Southern California Edison
is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving a population
of nearly 14 million via 4.9 million customer accounts in a
50,000-square-mile service area within Central, Coastal and Southern
California.
Copyright Business Wire 2014