A new pilot project from Illinois’ largest utility is bringing energy storage out from behind the substation and into the neighborhood.
Last month, ComEd deployed a 25-kilowatt-hour, lithium-ion battery in Beecher, Illinois, about 40 miles south of Chicago. In the event of a power outage, the battery can supply about an hour of backup power to three houses selected for the project.
It’s part of a broader experiment in Community Energy Storage (CES), or the deployment of medium-sized batteries in between those found in utility-scale applications and the kind of personal, home-battery systems offered by Tesla and others. Taken together, distributed CES units can start to match the scale of larger, more centralized energy-storage systems.
ComEd says the Beecher pilot will run for a year, and that similar pilot projects are in the works. The Beecher CES system is aimed primarily at mitigating reliability issues — the area experiences an unusually high amount of outages due to challenges with a nearby medium voltage line that serves it, according to Manuel Avendano, manager of emerging technology in ComEd’s distribution planning and smart grid group.
Down the road, CES could provide other benefits, such as the integration of more solar energy and reductions in the peak demand periods that strain the grid, Avendano says.
“Through grid modernization and smart grid investments, our reliability performance has been best on record for five years running, and we’re committed to continuous improvement,” Michelle Blaise, ComEd’s senior vice president of technical Services, said in a statement. “We want all ComEd customers to experience great reliability and that’s why we’re innovating and piloting emerging technologies such as energy storage to bring new value to communities and help improve service for our customers.”
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