On the 31st of May Oregon-based long duration energy storage (LDES) manufacturer ESS Tech Inc and California’s Burbank Water and Power together celebrated the installation and commissioning of a 75KW/500KWh ESS Energy Warehouse iron flow battery on the BWP EcoCampus.
The ESS system has been connected to a 265KW solar array that, when fully operational, should provide power equivalent to the consumption of up to 300 homes annually.
Mandip Samra, general manager of BWP, said, “We are excited to enhance the reliability and resilience of our grid while maximising the use of renewable energy”.
BWP secured a grant of a $125,000 from the American Public Power Associations Demonstration of Energy and Efficiency to help offset the costs.
The commissioning follows ESS’s recent attainment of IEEE693 seismic certification for its energy centre product line. Other customers have included US Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento Municipal Utility District and Turlock Irrigation district.
The company say they use earth-abundant iron, salt and water to deliver environmentally safe solutions capable of providing up to 12 hours of flexible energy capacity for commercial and utility scale energy storage applications.
The California State Energy Storage Alliance estimates that the state will need 13,571MW of LDES by 2028 to integrate intermittent renewable energy and optimise assets for a cleaner more reliable grid. California has an ambitious decarbonisation goal of zero electricity emissions by 2045.
