Courtesy of Burns & McDonnell
Burns & McDonnell has completed construction of three 10-MW/20-MWh lithium-ion battery energy storage systems in West Texas. The three project sites were constructed, commissioned and put into operation in just five months, delivering the project on schedule amid a volatile supply chain and logistics market.
The batteries are designed as stand-alone energy resources to provide support for the Texas power grid as it experiences fluctuations in supply and demand.
“Having an integrated EPC team allowed for a smooth transition between each phase of the project,” says Josh Tucker, project manager at Burns & McDonnell. “It also allowed us to pivot and work with our construction team to modify schedule, re-sequence tasks and properly hand over the system between construction and commissioning to see that the project was brought online and generating revenue by the promised completion date.”
Courtesy of Burns & McDonnell
From the onset of the project Burns & McDonnell worked closely with the battery provider, LG Energy Solution, to coordinate design, as well as delivery of equipment and materials to the site throughout construction and commissioning. Burns & McDonnell integrated the system components with Emerson’s Ovation automation technology enabling reliable, secure and robust asset monitoring and control. As an open-source platform, Ovation software increases visibility into battery operations and simplifies system management, allowing the storage system owner/operator to view, optimize and modify the controls even years after commissioning if system requirements change.
News item from Burns & McDonnell
“The three project sites were constructed, commissioned and put into operation in just five months, delivering the project on schedule amid a volatile supply chain and logistics market.”
Therein lies the efficacy of an ESS. Now the utility industry needs to break through their own energy storage paradigm, that ESS is good for “only” 4 hours. Proper design and control criteria could make the matrixed system possible and now one has inverters that are grid forming and can mimic the mechanical generation momentum used today. One can replace a natural gas Peaker plant with the proper designed smart ESS. Say one designs a matrixed system with 6 of these 10MW/20MWh systems, one could have 10MWh of generation online for about 9 hours. Or 20MWh for 4.5 hours or step all the way up to 60MWh for about 1.5 hours. Is it trivial? NO. Is it possible, sure.