Texas-based electric utility Luminant has been awarded a US$1 million grant from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), to build a battery energy storage system at Luminant’s Upton 2 Solar Power Plant.
Luminant will install a 10 megawatt/42 megawatt-hour lithium-ion energy storage system at the 180MW solar facility— the largest in Texas— near McCamey in Upton County. The battery will capture excess solar energy produced during the day and release it in the late afternoon and early evening periods of peak demand.
The award was made under the New Technology Implementation Grant Program, which is part of TCEQ’s Texas Emissions Reduction Plan— established in 2001 to “provide financial incentives to eligible individuals, businesses, or local government to reduce emissions”.
Luminant—a wholly owned subsidiary of Texan firm Vistra Energy—owns and manages around 41,000MW of energy generation spread across 12 US states, consisting of natural gas, nuclear, coal, and solar facilities.
In 2014, Luminant and TXU Energy voiced their disapproval of a proposal for Oncor Electric Delivery to install 5GW of battery storage capacity across the state of Texas.
Once complete, the battery at Upton 2 will be the largest in Texas, and the seventh largest in the US. The project is expected to be operational in late 2018.
