Washington's Snohomish County Public Utility District (PUD) and 1Energy Systems have announced a partnership to develop and deploy a 1 MW battery energy storage system, which the parties say will help increase the use of renewable energy and improve overall reliability.
Under the partnership, 1Energy will provide the energy storage system, built on a Modular Energy Storage Architecture (MESA). The system, based on commercially available, advanced technology batteries, will be housed in a standard shipping container that will be installed at a PUD substation.
Alstom Grid and faculty from the University of Washington will join the project to collaborate on research, analysis and design of technology interfaces. Alstom Grid will work with 1Energy to build MESA interfaces into its control center software platforms, used by Snohomish PUD, and 1Energy will lead the selection of future MESA partners that will provide batteries, power conversion and balance-of-system components.
“This collaboration will produce a state-of-the-art energy storage unit for use by the PUD,” says Snohomish PUD General Manager Steve Klein. “It will bring major equipment and software companies together to establish the appropriate industry standards and interfaces to make storage more economically and operationally viable for the entire electric utility industry.
“This approach is much different than other energy storage projects in the past and should result in the expanded application of plug-n-play type energy storage systems to help solve the expanding needs of today’s electric grid that depends more and more on intermittent resources such as wind and solar,” Klein continues.
