US-based power company Duke Energy has outlined plans to invest US$500 million to build around 300 megawatts of battery storage in their home state and its southern sister over the next 15 years.
The BESS booster initiative forms part of the company’s Integrated Resource Plan.
The initiative would represent a major expansion of battery storage from the roughly 15MW of aggregated storage that currently exists in North Carolina (NC) from all utilities in the state combined. There is even less in South Carolina, Duke said.
Meanwhile, Duke has filed for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity to build a 2MW solar facility and a 4MW lithium-based storage facility, as part of a microgrid project in the Hot Springs community of Madison County, NC.
Duke said a 95 kilowatt-hour zinc-air battery and 10kWh solar installation provided by the company has already been serving a communications tower in the Smoky Mountains for more than one year.
The company will also install a 9MW lithium-ion battery system at Duke’s substation in Asheville, NC, as well as replacing a 50-year-old coal power plant with “a cleaner natural gas plant”, as part of its Western Carolinas Modernisation Project.
Duke president Rob Caldwell said: “Utility-owned and operated projects in North Carolina and South Carolina will include a variety of system benefits that will help improve reliability for our customers and provide significant energy grid support for the region.”
