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More than 800,000 lithium-ion batteries housed in shipping containers at a Dayton Power & Light facility in Moraine play a “critical” role in stabilizing the grid that supplies electricity to 60 million people, and help lower costs for consumers, according to top officials from DP&L’s parent company, AES Corp.
The $20 million AES battery array, located at the Tait generating station off Arbor and Carillon boulevards in Moraine, is the first advanced battery energy storage system in Ohio and one of the top five largest in the world, said Chris Shelton, president of AES Energy Storage.
The Tait system, along with a similar AES battery facility in West Virginia, has been named as a finalist for the Edison Electric Institute’s 2014 Edison Award, the electric power industry’s highest honor. The awards will be presented Monday at the association’s annual convention in Las Vegas.
The Tait project is being recognized for “moving the entire industry forward to really take storage seriously and include more of it as an alternative to power plants, in some cases,” Shelton said.
The storage system launched in September uses about 880,000 D-size batteries to provide 40 megawatts of frequency regulation service to PJM Interconnection, the electric grid operator for 60 million people in 13 states, including Ohio, and the District of Columbia.
“The primary function of this is grid stability,” said Phil Herrington, AES president of U.S. Competitive Generation. Traditionally, that has been achieved through the use of gas and coal plants, which are slow to respond and consume large amounts of fuel, he said.
In contrast, battery-based grid resources can meet the energy needs of any given market in “fractions of a second,” without requiring water to operate or producing direct emissions, Herrington said.
AES’s battery facilities in Moraine and Laurel Mountain, W. Va., have delivered more than $20 million in benefits to PJM and public utility customers, according to the Edison Electric Institute.
“This isn’t just a speculative technology that doesn’t have a real immediate and positive impact on the way we manage our grid,” Herrington said. “It pays benefits right away. It is important to customers, it’s important to those of us who operate the grid, and as investors. It’s just a tremendous project.”
Officials said DP&L’s Tait station was selected as the battery array site because it had space for 10 climate-controlled containers and a new operations building. It also offered direct connection to the grid through an existing transformer, which saved the company $1 million on the project.
Tait station’s natural gas-powered generating turbines, which are visible to motorists to the west of Interstate 75 in Moraine, are used during times of peak electricity demand in the summer.
Tait’s battery array remains connected to the grid, and is continuously drawing or discharging energy in response to signals from PJM, said Mark Sizemore, plant manager for DP&L Generation Dayton.
The electric grid operates at 60 hertz. If power drops below that frequency because of a disruption or increased demand, the batteries discharge up to 20 megawatts of energy to restore the grid to 60 hertz, Sizemore explained. Conversely, if the grid is overpowered due to low demand, the batteries draw up to 20 megawatts to recharge themselves and restore the grid to an efficient operating level.
AES receives payment from PJM for both charging and discharging the batteries, with prices being determined by market demand, Sizemore said.
Shelton said PJM has recognized the Tait system “as one of the best-performing resources in that entire market.”
AES currently operates four such battery storage sites in the U.S., and two in Chile.
The company has invested more than $100 million into the technology, and currently has more than 1,000 megawatts worth of similar projects in its development pipeline, Shelton said.
“We are focused on growing it around the world, and we are excited about the region around Dayton, as well as California, the Philippines and other markets, as well,” he said.
Herrington said AES is starting to see a “major impact and value to the storage units” in markets with a high degree of renewable energy sources. Solar and wind power aren’t consistent because of clouds and wind cycles, so another energy source, such as gas turbines, must be used to fill those supply gaps, he said.
Battery storage can play an important role in helping utilities integrate renewable energy, Herrington said.
“Having storage devices on the grid to help level that impact allows those of us who supply and procure renewable power to do that much more effectively,” Herrington said. “It allows us to buy more renewable power and put more renewable power on the grid.”
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