New York has among the world’s tightest rules on fire safety and regular readers of this site will be aware that that has had a big impact on the ability to site lithium-ion based battery energy storage systems (BESS) within the boundaries of the state’s urban regions.
While the development of large-scale systems is taking place in less densely populated upstate areas of New York, commercial and industrial (C&I) battery storage, which has been used elsewhere around the country to help businesses manage their energy costs and the wider network to adopt greater shares of renewables, has not really been able to gain a foothold.
A couple of weeks ago the New York Power Authority (NYPA) – a public-benefit corporation which serves around 25% of the state’s electric load – began trialling an energy storage system using lithium batteries based around start-up Cadenza Innovation’s ’Supercell’ architecture. Wrapping individual cells into a protective housing, the technology is a low-cost way to prevent thermal runaway from cascading through a battery rack and causing fires.
NYPA has also this month published its strategic plan for achieving rapid decarbonisation, perhaps even five years ahead of the New York climate legislature’s already-ambitious 2040 target, with the utility citing that it will focus in continuing to develop and demonstrate long-duration and short-duration energy storage technologies.
The utility is putting its resources to work in supporting Cadenza and others such as zinc battery company Zinc8 and the new trial puts NYPA’s neck on the line, metaphorically speaking; the 240kWh ’Supercell’ system has been installed at NYPA’s own offices in White Plains.
NYPA’s R&D lead Alan Ettlinger and Cadenza Innovation CEO Christina Lampe-Onnerud spoke with Energy-Storage.news as the trial got underway, with Ettlinger explaining why, with the ‘Supercell’, NYPA may have found “the answer” to many of the concerns preventing battery storage from making it big in New York.
Recent Comments