Stealthy grid infrastructure developer LS Power now operates the largest grid battery in the world.
The Gateway Energy Storage project was launched earlier this summer, with an initial tranche of 62.5 megawatts / 62.5 megawatts-hours. That was enough to make it the most powerful battery in the US. But LS Power had its sleeves raised more, and now Gateway can charge or discharge 230 megawatts for one hour, expecting it to rise to 250 megawatts at the end of the month.
In any case, that would be big news for the storage sector, as it is the previous largest battery, the Tesla-supplied Hornsdale plant (150 megawatts / 193.5 megawatts-hours), larger. But the advent coincides with an energy crisis, as California struggles to produce enough power to keep the roster running amid a historic heat wave.
California has been shutting down enough power in recent years to capacity that it now has trouble meeting demand for air conditioning on hot days during the hours when the sun goes down and solar generation goes down. Meanwhile, imports from neighboring states are restricted because those states have the same heat wave.
A wave of massive battery projects is under construction in California, many of which are designed to step in for the retention gas and nuclear plants due to the generation of sun in the hours after sunset. Gateway is the first of this cohort to come online. It only supplies more power than any other battery connected to the mains operated by the California Independent System Operator.
“By charging during solar production at off-peak hours and delivering energy to the net in times of peak demand for power, our battery storage projects improve electrical reliability, reduce costs and help our state meet its climate goals,” he said. LS Power Head of Renewables John King said in a statement.
Batteries play a clear role in meeting the hot demand between 6pm and 8pm on Friday, according to CAISO data. But the available batteries only came up to 140 megawatts, not quite enough to prevent rotated outages that evening. However, record-breaking power prices offered a bounty for those batteries that could compete.
Gateway reached 200 megawatts on commission on August 1 and added 30 megawatts more on Monday afternoon to provide extra peak power for the heatwave, King said in an interview with GTM. The facility will expand next summer to three hours of duration and later to four hours.
The developer did not intend to downsize the building in the midst of a historic crunch of energy supply, King said. LS Power began work on it five years ago, in response to California’s rising solar generation and decided to shut down gas installations that used ocean water for cooling. Then no one built batteries anywhere near this kind of scale.
“Battery storage, when we started, was very expensive,” King said. “It was not exactly clear that it would work, but if you are in development, you have to look a little bit ahead.”
The 40-megawatt Vista Project company went online in 2018, in time for that year’s heatwave and price spikes, providing some more data for the business. LS Power has coordinated Gateway’s business plan by selling energy products to power retailers and community aggregators, King said. One type of product involves the customer delivering power in the afternoon, with Gateway promising to store and return this power in the evening, and isolating the customer from price spikes.
When California regulators ordered the utilities last fall to gain more capacity, Gateway Resource won Adequacy contracts with Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison. Those commitments will kick in next year.
“We built Gateway as a shorter-term project, but we built it so we had room in the buildings … to expand that capacity when we had customers for that capacity,” King said.
LS Power hired NEC Energy Solutions to integrate the Gateway project, which uses battery cells produced by LG Chem. A time-lapse video shows the warehouse-like structure appearing at East Otay Mesa between September 2019 and July 2020.
Gateway currently participates in all CAISO markets, King said, and has “done really well” responding to the CAISO signals amid the hot wave.
Updated with comments from John King.
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