The Dry Bridge Energy Storage project in Chesterfield County, Virginia, is now fully operational and providing key power services to Dominion Energy customers. Development firm East Point Energy sold the project to Dominion Energy Virginia in September 2021, prior to the company’s acquisition by Equinor.
At 20 MW/80 MWh, Dry Bridge is the largest battery energy storage project in Virginia.
“Dry Bridge, our first utility-scale, stand-alone energy storage facility, represents a significant milestone in our commitment to meeting our VCEA targets. Dispatchable resources such as this are critical to ensuring the reliability our customers expect,” said Brandon Martin, Manager of Business Development at Dominion Energy.
News item from Dominion Energy
I believe surface storage of gaseous hydrogen via high pressure vessels is a superior technology.
When you analyze the entire green energy infrastructure, and the fact that the energy economy requires levels of thermal energy to the same level as electric energy, hydrogen storage appears superior. We don’t need more R&D for better batteries.
With alkaline electrolyzers and fuel cells, there are no precious metals or exotic materials. Lifetime of systems is twice that of current batteries, and there are none of the external issues regarding batteries. Duration of storage is not an issue with hydrogen and thermal energy is also stored. Also, when you study the entire energy/economic lifecycle of these systems, batteries look much less attractive, or even at a disadvantage. There are many of us who believe that batteries will find niches, but they cannot satisfy all the requirements for widespread utility storage. Even for transportation there are serious doubts.
My journal article provides all the necessary details to substantiate my statements here.
What would a US green hydrogen energy economy look like?
https://academic.oup.com/ce/article/7/5/1148/7330997
I know the intention of the headline, but it misses an important detail. Pumped hydro is still the dominant form of energy storage. The “largest energy storage project in Virginia”, the Bath County Pumped Storage Station, has a capacity of 3,003 megawatts.
My compliments on reporting both of the important values: stored energy in MWh & power in MW. Often the reporter neglects to get & report the actual stored energy capacity of an energy storage facility!?!
I note that sometimes the stored energy is implied by reporting the time, typically in hours, that the facility can deliver full power. E.g. in this case 20 MW for 4 hours. 20*4 =80MWh.
The facility is reported as having “dispatchable services”. So a deeper report could name those.