San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has accomplished two further utility-owned energy storage services totaling 171 MW, sufficient to power nearly 130,000 properties for 4 hours.
The 131 MW Westside Canal challenge, positioned in Imperial Valley – home to a excessive focus of solar, wind and geothermal era services – is the biggest storage asset in SDG&E’s energy storage portfolio; the 40 MW Fallbrook challenge, positioned in Northern San Diego County, is the second largest in its portfolio.
By the top of this yr, SDG&E’s energy storage portfolio is predicted to succeed in 345 MW of power capability, ample to satisfy over 15% of its prospects’ load on a typical day and seven% on a system peak day. These energy storage property take part within the energy markets managed by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), permitting CAISO to retailer and dispatch clear energy from the services to satisfy electrical energy demand as wanted.
“The beauty of energy storage is it can help California solve two problems simultaneously: It can soak up surplus renewable energy during the day, so solar and wind farms don’t have to cut off production when demand on the grid is low,” says Miguel Romero, SDG&E vp of energy innovation.
In current years, as wind and solar era capability has soared in California, renewable era services have needed to more and more curtail, or cut back, energy manufacturing to maintain the grid balanced. At occasions, California has needed to pay neighboring states to take its oversupply of solar energy to be able to keep away from overloading the grid.
California has additionally skilled repeated grid emergencies throughout file warmth waves, which pushed the grid to the brink because of energy demand exceeding provide.
The Westside Canal storage facility consists of greater than 800 cubes of stacked lithium-ion batteries that stretch throughout roughly 16 acres of land. It started business operation in June. The Fallbrook energy storage challenge can also be made up of stacks of lithium-ion batteries tightly packed inside metallic cubes. It started business operation in May. Both services are geared up with security options, distant monitoring and automation applied sciences. When smoke or different anomalies are detected, the items will routinely shut down.
The completion of those tasks follows two different utility-owned storage tasks SDG&E has introduced on-line in recent times: the Top Gun Energy Storage Facility (30 MW) in San Diego’s Miramar space and the Kearny Energy Storage Facility (20 MW) within the Kearny Mesa space.
