The world’s largest battery storage system, located in the East Otay Mesa community in San Diego County, California (USA), went into operation last week. The Gateway Energy Storage project, implemented by LS Power, currently has an operational capacity of 230 MW and is expected to reach 250 MW by the end of this month. Its MWh capacity is estimated to be between 1 GWh and 1,5 GWh.
According to LS Power, the construction was carried out by McCarthy Building Companies, while NEC built the system with LG Chem batteries and SMA inverters. According to Pedro Alves, Country Manager SMA Brazil, the manufacturer's participation in this project consolidates the company's position as the largest supplier of this type of storage solution in the world.
“The state of California has an incentive for energy storage, precisely because of the number of interruptions in energy supply in some regions, which is very significant in this type of solution”, says Alves.
“The objective of the SMA solution is, basically, to improve the stability of the grid and take advantage of photovoltaic generation to charge the batteries throughout the day, when there is solar radiation, and provide energy at times of peak demand. So, for this type of project, there is greater security in the distribution network and because of this, it brings an improvement in consumer dissatisfaction rates, because the incidence of blackouts is reduced”, adds the executive.
“In terms of technology, SMA used an ac coupling configuration and, in partnership with the battery supplier, we provided the entire engineering and commissioning service for the system to allow it to perform in the best way expected from the local utility”, concludes Alves .
Power grid outages
According to LS Power, the Gateway Energy Storage project is coming online at a critical time in California, as the state’s growing heat wave has strained the power grid, causing rolling blackouts. With the project, the state’s power grid operator hopes to add more storage capacity, making it possible to meet demand at night, when solar energy storage capacity is at a reduced level.
Ongoing projects
LS Power has several projects in development and under construction in California and New York: Diablo Energy Storage (200 MW) in Pittsburg, California; LeConte Energy Storage (125 MW) in Calexico, California; and Ravenswood Energy Storage (316 MW) in Queens, New York.
