Things are moving fast in the grid battery industry – and nowhere faster than California.
That’s where LS Power, a private equity firm that develops network infrastructure, plugged in the country’s most powerful new battery last month.
The Gateway Energy Storage Project activated an initial 62.5-megawatt / 62.5-megawatt-hour stretch near San Diego on June 9, according to the California Independent System Operator.
That beats the previous record holder for the most powerful battery in the US, held by LS Power’s 40-megawatt Vista project, which opened in San Diego County with little fanfare in July 2018. Another battery has more storage capacity: the 30 megawatt / 120 megawatt-hour Hidden System that AES (now Fluence) supplied to the utility San Diego Gas & Electric. For a quiet coastal town, San Diego has a clear monopoly on the largest batteries in the country so far.
However, that will change soon. Power producer Vistra Energy is building the Moss Landing battery in Monterey Bay, California, which involves swapping an old gas-fired plant for 400 megawatts / 1,600 megawatt-hours of batteries to support the Bay Area network. Utilities Florida Power & Light is working on a 409-megawatt / 900-megawatt-hour battery to shift solar output to afternoons and displace decades-old gas plants.
The world’s largest network battery is still the Neoen Hornsdale power reserve, famous for Tesla after Elon Musk’s Twitter bet that it could be delivered in 100 days or it would be free. Tesla recently expanded that battery, so it is now 150 megawatts / 193.5 megawatt-hours.
Compared to that advertisement, LS Power flies under the radar. As a private entity, you have no need to spark investor interest or spin a radical growth narrative for venture capitalists. He quietly developed the largest battery in the United States for years, then turned it on without showing off.
The system uses batteries from NEC Energy Solutions, the respected storage integrator that recently appeared in the news for its corporate parent to choose close new businesses. The project is housed in a 70,000 square foot building with 98 SMA inverters, and there is room to expand. The plan is to grow to 250 megawatts, and eventually 4 hours long, resulting in a 1,000 megawatt-hour system.
Developers don’t build that big without knowing where the revenue will come from. Gateway previously won a 15 year contract with Pacific Gas & Electric. LS Power must deliver 50 megawatts / 200 megawatt-hours beginning October 1, 2021. The company also promised 100 megawatts / 400 megawatt-hours from Gateway to Southern California Edison, effective August 1, 2021.
Those contracts resulted from a fight for new capacity as California contemplated the impending decommissioning of several large gas-fired power plants. The state has a lively fleet of solar generation, but needs to find non-fossil sources of capacity as it moves to a carbon-free grid by 2045.
Gateway is an early arrival of this new wave of massive batteries that will redesign the mix of network capacity in California. But you are not alone. CAISO You expect the storage capacity in your system to multiply six times this year, from 136 megawatts to 923 megawatts.
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