Energy Storage, Utilities  -  February 6, 2017

70 MW of energy storage comes online in California

Around the same time that Tesla and Edison International subsidiary Southern California Edison announced that their 80 MWh energy storage facility had begun operations in late January, two other massive energy storage projects came online in the region. 

All three facilities, which reportedly total 70 MW of capacity, were built quickly following California Public Utilities Commission's May 2016 direction to SoCalEd and  subsidiary San Diego Gas & Electric, or SDG&E, to expedite the use of energy storage connected to the grid to mitigate for the loss of natural gas storage caused by a monthslong leak at Southern California Gas Co.'s Aliso Canyon.  That leak, which released tens of thousands of metric tons of methane into the California air, has been called the worst man-made greenhouse-gas disaster in U.S. history. 

Greensmith Energy on Jan. 27 announced the successful completion and grid connection of its 20 MW/80 MWh energy storage system at the AltaGas Pomona Energy Facility in Pomona, Calif. Partnered with AltaGas, Greensmith said in a news release that it set an industry record in the design, integration and installation of the energy storage system in under four months. That system, same as Tesla's, is connected to SoCalEd's grid. 

The largest of the three projects is the 30 MW battery installation AES announced it had completed at SDG&E's Escondido substation. According to Greentech Media, that system represents the largest lithium-ion battery project in the world.

San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas are both subsidiaries of Sempra Energy. 

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