Invenergy adds 31.5 MW battery to booming PJM frequency regulation market

Dive Brief:

Invenergy brought the 31.5 MW Beech Ridge energy storage project online this week, adjacent to its 100.5 MW wind farm in West Virginia. Beech Ridge will use stored wind energy to provide fast-response frequency regulation to the PJM Interconnection ancillary services market.
Invenergy brought Beech Ridge's sister project, the 31.5 MW Grand Ridge storage facility, online in Illinois earlier this year near an existing 1.5 MW storage site. This new facility brings Invenergy's total battery storage supply available to PJM for frequency regulation to 64.5 MW.
The Grand Ridge facility is also near a 210 MW wind project and a 20 MW solar array, part of Invenergy’s 9 GW of U.S. renewables. Battery-stored energy can provide almost instant grid-balancing power on a sub-hourly basis that is valuable to grid operators in sustaining system frequency and preventing outages.

Dive Insight:

With Beech Ridge, Invenergy’s operational storage capacity is over 100 MW. For the projects, Invenergy is using battery manufacturer BYD America’s proprietary containerized lithium-iron phosphate battery systems. BYD is planning to scale up its U.S. production to rival Tesla’s giga-factory plans.

Tesla’s newly announced utility-scale storage is thought to not be well-suited for frequency regulation because it lacks the necessary fast-ramp, high power-discharge capability.

PJM now has nearly 200 MW of storage for frequency regulation, with much more to come.

Startup Alevo is planning 200 MW of additional storage for frequency regulation, and Solar Grid Storage (SGS), just purchased by SunEdison, is planning another 100 MW. NEC Energy Solutions will add a further 60 MW of storage for frequency regulation by mid-2016.

PJM’s frequency regulation services market was the first from an independent system operator to offer significant remuneration for quick-start fast-ramp power from batteries and other load control systems that substitute for power plant-provided services. Payments have averaged $40-$50 per MWh for capacity plus performance since 2012.