Power company Vistra Corp has brought a 260MW/260MWh lithium-ion battery energy storage project online in Texas, US— the largest of its kind in the Lone Star state.
The DeCordova Energy Storage Facility is the second of seven zero-carbon projects Vistra aims to bring online in Texas as part of its growing Vistra Zero portfolio.
The latest system in Granbury is releasing power to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid, and is co-located on the same site as Vistra’s DeCordova natural gas-fueled power plant.
Jim Burke, Vistra president and chief financial officer, said: “This pairing means we essentially have a large, one-hour battery system with dispatchable, reliable generation, leading to continuity of operation and resiliency of the grid.
“In addition, these gas-fueled generation units have seven days of diesel backup in the event of any disruption of natural gas supplies, which is yet another example of the resiliency aspect of the Decordova site.”
The system uses more than 3,000 individual battery modules to capture excess power from the grid, primarily overnight during high wind-output hours, for use at times of peak demand.
The facility uses project inverters supplied by Sungrow, the project integrator.
Curt Morgan, CEO of Vistra said: “The battery storage technology at DeCordova accomplishes those objectives— providing instantaneous-start, dispatchable generation to help balance the intermittency of renewable energy as the electric grid transitions to low-to-zero-carbon resources.”
Texas black outs
In the winter of 2021, Texas suffered a power outage that left millions without power.
The disaster began with a winter storm on 13 February, which brought some of the coldest weather the state had experienced since 1989.
The black outs caused 900 public water systems in 164 counties to be affected, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality; the loss of power for more than 4.5 million homes resulted in at least 57 deaths across 25 Texas counties and more than $195 billion in property damage.
