Dive Brief:
- The AltaGas Pomona Energy Facility in southern California is now online as one of the projects formally commissioned in response to the Aliso Canyon gas leak that threatened generator fuel supplies in the region.
- Greensmith Energy announced this morning its batteries have been successfully deployed, giving Southern California Edison a 20 MW/80 MWh resource to help maintain grid stability.
- Other energy storage projects are nearing completion, including an 80 MWh Tesla project for SCE, and almost 40 MW for San Diego Gas & Electric being developed by AES.
Dive Insight:
Battery storage is coming online this month in southern California, evidence not just of the resource's potential, but also how quickly the industry can react when regulators clear the way. Greensmith was tapped for the Pomona project in August 2016, and completed design and installation in just months.
“This project had a very tight construction and delivery time frame given the sheer size of the project,” Greensmith CFO and COO Jim Murphy said in a statement, adding the company worked “seamlessly with our tier one supply chain."
The system also utilizes the latest version of Greensmith's GEMS5 platform, which is being leveraged for resource adequacy "along with additional select grid operations to create additional revenue streams over time."
Under the terms of a 10-year agreement announced last year with SCE, AltaGas will own the facility and provide 20 MW of resource adequacy capacity for a 4-hour duration—the equivalent of 80 MWh of energy discharging capacity. In return, AltaGas will receive fixed monthly resource adequacy payments and "retain the rights to earn additional revenue from the energy from the lithium-ion batteries," the company explained.
Other projects related to the Aliso Canyon leak are coming online. Electrek.Co reports that while Tesla's project has not officially launched, installation of Tesla powerpacks is complete and the utility is already using it to reduce demand during peak hours.
