The twin smokestacks of the Moss Landing Power Plant tower over Monterey Bay. Visible for miles along this picturesque stretch of the Northern California coast, the 500-foot-tall pillars crown what was once California’s largest electric power station — a behemoth natural gas-fired generator. Today, as California steadily moves to decarbonize its economy, those stacks are idle and the plant is largely mothballed.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California approved a battery energy storage system at the Robert A. Skinner Water Treatment Plant.
The Oct. 13 MWD board vote amended MWD’s capital investment plan to include battery storage systems at three treatment plants and one pumping plant, authorized an agreement with Stantec Inc., for the design of the battery energy storage facilities and found the study portion of the project to be categorically exempt from California Environmental Quality Act review.
Developing a lithium industry in California’s Salton Sea, an area that experts think could supply more than a third of lithium demand in the world today, could help set up a multi-billion dollar domestic supply chain for electric vehicle batteries, according to a new report from New Energy Nexus.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has had a busy year. Chairman Neil Chatterjee gave a keynote at last week’s virtual REFF Wall Street to sum up 2020’s regulatory challenges and victories.
Chatterjee believes in competitive markets and is happy to see renewable sources win on price on an equal playing field. He didn’t mention solar by name — but he is really enthusiastic about storage, hybrid generation, and the changing regulatory landscape around these new resources.
Move over, Australia — California has stolen the claim for largest battery installation in the world. In the middle of a vicious heatwave where demand for air conditioning led to rolling blackouts, an energy development company called LS Power was working hard to add more lithium-ion batteries to its Gateway Energy Storage project in San Diego.
Last month as a heat wave slammed California, state regulators sent an email to a group of energy executives pleading for help. “Please consider this an urgent inquiry on behalf of the state,” the message said.
Around 170 battery storage systems larger than 1 MW are currently operating in the U.S., but the 62.5 MW first phase of the Gateway project is already the largest in the country, CAISO said in a press release.
Storage resources are becoming more competitive, but installations are really being driven by carbon reduction and clean energy goals, Mohit Chhabra, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and clean energy program, told Utility Dive.
With climate change-amplified wildfires and power shut-offs becoming commonplace, all Californians are worried about how to stay safe and keep the lights on. Thousands have already purchased dirty, dangerous and noisy fossil fuel generators that exacerbate air pollution and climate change.
New research suggests that polluted air is linked to higher COVID-19 death rates. And coronavirus is expected to be with us through the 2020 fire season. Is it a good idea to add tons of dangerous particulate matter to the air we breathe during a pandemic that attacks the respiratory system? Of course not.
With the inclusion of battery energy storage into new building codes and safety standards, it’s obvious just how mainstream storage is today.
Southern California Edison signed seven contracts for a total of 770 megawatts of lithium-ion battery-based energy storage — to enhance the regional grid’s reliability and replace four large coastal once-through cooling plants.
It’s one of the nation’s largest energy storage procurements and an indication of utility acceptance of massive-scale battery storage. Late last year, the California Public Utilities Commission urged California’s power providers and community choice aggregators to procure 3.3 GW of storage and PV-plus-storage systems to solve grid congestion and to compensate for gas and coal plant retirements.
Remarkably, SCE wants these energy storage resources online by August 2021, an aggressive timeline unthinkable for any type of fossil fuel project of this size.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
