US electric utility Tucson Electric Power (TEP) is planning to enhance the performance of Arizona’s electric grid by using two 10MW lithium battery systems.
TEP has recently completed two lithium battery energy storage projects, constructed by E. ON’s North America subsidiary and a subsidiary of Florida-based electricity supplier NextEra Energy Resources.
TEP expects to spend about $1.7 million annually on the two new storage systems combined, under 10-year contracts with E.ON and NextEra.
Known as the Iron Horse project, it features a customised 10MW lithium-ion battery energy storage facility with an adjacent 2MW solar array at the University of Arizona Tech Park southeast of Tucson.
A subsidiary of NextEra recently completed construction of a 10MW lithium nickel-manganese-cobalt energy storage system at a TEP substation.
TEP’s short-duration battery systems are intended to bridge the time it takes to bring supplemental generating sources online after an outage, and to help with grid reliability by shoring up voltage and regulating power frequency when needed.
Joe Barrios, TEP’s spokesman, claims the short-run battery systems would help reduce costs by replacing other grid-reliability measures. “This is a pretty new technology that has become reliable, and the cost is now reasonable,” he said.
TEP plans to invest in 50MW of additional energy storage in 2019, add another 50MW by 2021 and another 100MW in 2031, according to the company’s most recent resource plan.