Dive Brief:

• Younicos has signed an agreement with Austin Energy for a 1.75 MW, 3.2 MWh energy storage system.

• The storage system will be part of a Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) that aims to maintain grid reliability while allowing high levels of distributed solar PV penetration.

• The project is part of the Department of Energy’s Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar PV (SHINES) program. 

Dive Insight:

The DOE’s SHINES program is part of the agency’s Grid Modernization Initiative that aims to improve the resiliency, reliability and security of the nation’s power grid. SHINES itself is the first DOE funding program that looks exclusively at connecting renewable power to storage.

Austin Energy’s $4.3 million SHINES grant is the largest of six projects that have won a total of $18 million of awards the DOE program. The utility must also meet its renewable energy target of 55% by 2025.  

Younicos, working with the Austin project's prime contractor, Doosan GridTech, is deploying its Y.Q software platform, which will communicate with Doosan’s Intelligent Controller using the Modular Energy Storage Architecture (MESA) open standard. Younicos says the seven Y.Cubes and Y.Converters represent being deployed on the project represent the company's largest Y.Cube deployment in the U.S. to date.

The battery system will be sited in an east Austin neighborhood near both residential and commercial buildings and has been designed with multiple thermal management subsystems for maximum safety.

“Integrating energy storage with solar is becoming essential as we achieve our utility's goal of 55% renewable energy by 2025,” Karl Popham, Austin SHINES principal investigator and manager of emerging technologies at Austin Energy, said in a statement. “The Austin SHINES program is more than a technical pilot; it is phase one of a larger rollout to maximize the value of distributed energy resources for our customers and the utility.”