Thursday, September 25, 2014
SCE Plans Giant Energy Storage Battery In Tehachapi
Southern California Edison said Wednesday that it is planning to build what it says is the largest, battery energy storage project in North America in Tehachapi. According to SCE, the project--being partially funded by the Department of Energy--will store 32 megawatt hours of energy storage in Tehachapi, California, and will be used to store wind energy generated from the wind farms in the area. The energy storage system will cost about $50M, and features the use of a giant bank of lithium-ion batteries housed at SCE's Monolith substation in Tehachapi. The pilot program is aimed at demonstrating the effectiveness of lithium ion batteries and smart inverter technologies for energy storage, and will include 604 battery racks, 10,872 battery modules and 608,832 individual battery cells. The batteries that SCE plans to use are coming from LG Chem, and are the same bateries used in the Chevrolet Volt. Image: Construction on SCE's Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project, via SCE.