Primus Power has partnered with the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) to deliver and support two of its 250 kW EnergyPod storage devices as part of a research and demonstration project under a BPA technology development program in the Pacific Northwest.
Primus says some utility districts are seeking opportunities to enhance the integration of variable renewable resources, such as wind and solar. The program is studying the potential installation of grid-scale flow batteries in the electric distribution network of Puget Sound Energy (PSE), an investor-owned, regulated utility that provides electric and natural gas service to customers within BPA's transmission and balancing territory.
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) will develop models of the storage systems to assess their energy and economic benefits and make recommendations on where they should be placed. After the systems are installed, the PNNL team will also help evaluate their actual performance.
Patrick Leslie, emerging technologies program manager at PSE, says that ‘this project is an opportunity for us to understand the feasibility and cost-benefit of using grid-scale battery arrays, as well as to get our hands dirty, so to speak, with an installation.’
BPA is funding roughly one-third of the total project with shared funding from PSE, the DOE and Primus.
