A disused paper mill in Maine, US, will host a ‘multi-day’ battery storage system as part of a major project to reinforce and upgrade the electricity grid in New England.
Power Up New England, a plan by the governments of the region’s six states to increase grid interconnection capabilities between Massachusetts and Connecticut, was announced yesterday (6 August) as a recipient of grant funding from the US Department of Energy (DOE).
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As reported by our colleagues at PV Tech earlier today, the DOE selected eight projects in total spanning 18 US states for a share of US$2.2 billion funding for transmission infrastructure and technology upgrades.
The awards form part of the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) Program, which in total will pay out more than US$10 billion, and was created through the Biden-Harris Administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
In total, close to 13GW of new grid capacity will be opened up by the projects, enabling the addition of renewable energy including 4.8GW of offshore wind, and hardening the grid’s resiliency from outages while increasing overall reliability. The expected load growth coming from data centres and manufacturing is a big driver of those needs.
Within that remit, innovative new technologies are also being supported.
Iron oxide battery startup Form Energy announced that its technology will be used as part of the Power Up New England project. A statement from the company’s CEO Matteo Jaramillo revealed that an 85MW Form Energy system with 100-hour duration (8,500MWh), will be deployed at the former paper mill site in Maine.
That means that, while relatively small in megawatt terms (power output), the multi-day project’s duration and therefore capacity makes it the largest single battery storage project announced to date in megawatt-hours.
The world’s largest standalone lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery energy storage system (BESS) project in operation today is the 3,000MWh Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California, while Edwards Sanborn Solar and Storage Project, also in California, and as the name suggests, a hybrid solar-plus-storage project, has 3,278MWh of BESS onsite.
Those are the operational projects, but even the world’s biggest announced in development so far, including one in the Philippines and another in Australia, range in planned capacities between about 4GWh and 5GWh.
Funds form part of total US$389 million Power Up New England award
Back in April, a statement on behalf of the New England states about Power Up New England was published by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, revealing that the project had applied for the GRIP programme Federal grant funding.
It also stated that the project was backed by a consortium of private sector organisations including energy storage developer Elevate Renewables, utilities Eversource and National Grid, and an unnamed “multi-day energy storage technology provider”.
Energy-Storage.news had taken that to be Form Energy which a source later privately confirmed ahead of this week’s announcement.
The office of Massachusetts governor Maura Healey said yesterday that Power Up New England had been awarded a total US$389 million funding via GRIP, of which US$147 million was earmarked for the Form Energy system.
Form Energy has been developing and commercialising a novel battery technology based on oxidisation i.e., rusting, and deoxidisation of iron as the battery charges and discharges.
It revealed the battery chemistry after coming out of stealth mode in 2020, and claimed it is suitable for very long-duration energy storage (LDES) applications with around 100 hours the sweet spot. The materials used are also abundant and cheap, and able to be sourced domestically within the US, Form Energy has said.
The multi-day energy storage provider is building its first factory in West Virginia and has scored a number of pilot project agreements with utilities around the US.
“Located at the site of a former paper mill in rural Maine, this iron-air battery system will have the most energy capacity of any battery system announced yet in the world,” Matteo Jaramillo said yesterday.
“The project will ensure a more reliable, clean, and affordable grid in New England by reducing transmission congestion and making valuable wind energy resources available when and where they are needed. By locating the project at an EPA brownfield site, we look forward to driving local job growth and other community benefits.”
