Utilities battle to be largest U.S. battery power station

Business news | January 30, 2017

By Rich Pell

Batteries / Power Supplies Power Management

AltaGas has opened its 20MW Pomona Energy Storage Facility at the site of its existing Pomona generation facility in the East Los Angeles Basin of Southern California, while AES is opening a 30MW system at Escondido in San Diego.

AES will deploy its Advancion 4 storage system to provide 30MW of power for four continuous hours and serve as a 75 MW of flexible resource to the grid, and the company claims this will be the largest system in the US. Altagas claims to provide 80MWh from its 20MW of storage, also claiming the crown.

The construction of the AltaGas lithium-ion battery system used cells from Samsung SDI was completed in less than four months, which ranks as one of the fastest deployments of battery storage capacity on this scale in the industry to date. Other suppliers include Parker Hannifin, Power Engineers and Greensmith Energy Management Systems. The AES system also uses batteries by Samsung SDI and power conversion systems by Parker Hannifin.

“We are pleased to advance our California power strategy by bringing 20 MW of battery storage online within a precedent setting four months,” said David Harris, President and CEO of AltaGas. “Providing energy from electricity stored in lithium-ion batteries provides clean reliable energy that complements California’s renewable energy portfolio while adding to the versatility of our asset base which is well situated for pursuing other energy storage developments.”

AltaGas will provide Southern California Edison with 20 MW of capacity for a continuous four hour period, which represents the equivalent of 80 MWh of energy discharging capacity. “Offsetting periods of peak power with 80 MWh from battery storage is enough power to feed the electricity needs of approximately 15,000 homes over the four-hour period,” said Harris.

www.altagas.com
www.aes.com