From Energy Manager Today:
Luminant, a subsidiary of Vistra Energy, recently announced that its Upton 2 battery energy storage system project has finished construction and began operating Dec. 31, 2018.
The battery system, which is the largest energy storage project in Texas and seventh largest in the United States, is located on the site of Luminant’s 180-megawatt Upton 2 Solar Power Plant in Upton County, Texas.
The 10-MW/42-MWh lithium-ion energy storage system captures excess solar energy produced at [Upton 2] during the day and can release the power in late afternoon and early evening, when energy demand in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) area is highest. The battery system can also take advantage of low-priced grid power — during times of high wind output, for example — to charge the batteries to be available for higher demand periods.
Vistra is also currently developing the world’s largest battery energy storage project, the 300-MW/1,200-MWh storage system at its Moss Landing Power Plant in California, scheduled for commercial operations in the fourth quarter of 2020.
[Read more here]
A 10 MW/42 MWh battery can provide 10 MW of electricity for 4.2 hours. The solar plant itself, with a capacity factor of 25%, would provide 45 MW, so the battery's maximum output is equal to less than one quarter of that. All the same it's a start. The critical point is that batteries are already cheap enough to be profitable on a small scale. As battery costs fall (20% per annum), their deployment will grow exponentially.
No comments:
Post a Comment