Chicago-based clean energy company Invenergy has started commercial operations of the 31.5-megawatt Grand Ridge Energy Storage project in La Salle County, Illinois.
The project has been developed on Invenergy’s Grand Ridge Energy Center premises, which is about 80 miles southwest of Chicago.
The project comprises a 210-megawatt wind farm, a 20-megawatt solar project, and a 1.5-megawatt energy storage unit.
Invenergy is also working toward bringing another 31.5-megawatt energy storage project — Beech Ridge Energy — in West Virginia later this year.
Grand Ridge Energy has deployed the Containerized Energy Storage System (CESS) developed by BYD America for storing energy.
According to Stella Li, the senior vice president at BYD Company, CESS uses BYD’s proprietary Lithium-ion Iron-Phosphate battery chemistry.
Beech Ridge Energy, too, will be using CESS to store energy. Till date Invenergy has developed more than 100 megawatts of energy storage projects in the US. Several other projects are also being developed in that country.
As the global share of renewable energy is growing, storage of the energy produced by such projects has become a segment receiving much attention.
In recent times Tesla grabbed headlines with the launch of Powerwall, its Lithium-ion battery based system which can power homes after sundown using energy it collects and stores from solar panels.
Storage solutions such as flywheel technology and conversion of solar energy into hydrogen for future use are all being tried and tested in different parts of the world.
Ajith Kumar S