Courtesy Pinegaterenewables.com
LOGAN — Earlier this month, Pine Gate Renewables of Asheville, North Carolina announced that it had won a competitive bid with Logan City Light & Power (LL&P) to build a stand-alone energy storage system with state-of-the-art equipment in Logan – the first of its kind in the state.
The Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) will be designed and integrated with the city’s System Operational Control Center, which monitors the municipal electricity distribution system, power plants, power contracts and call center.
It will also be able to accommodate the area’s wide range of changing seasonal temperatures and elevation in northern Utah.
On KVNU’s For the People program last week, Logan Light & Power director Mark Montgomery talked about the functionality of this battery.
“This is a pretty small battery so 0.125 megawatts is 125 kilowatts. It’s probably bigger than what somebody would put on their home as far as solar panels. Usually people put between 4 and 5 kilowatts, and we’re putting 125 kilowatts of batteries in. But on the scale of a utility grid system like Logan city, it’s pretty small,” he said.
But Montgomery said their intent was to put this in, see what it looks like and maybe run some scenarios to experiment to see how the batteries can work with the city’s other systems.
“For example, could we use that to shave some of our peak in the summer, if we’re hitting a real, high peak, can we dispatch these batteries so that it shaves that peak down and potentially saves us some money”
This was all made possible by a grant from the American Public Power Association (APPA). Montgomery hopes to get the project underway by late winter or early spring, but it depends on the delivery of the products.