20 MW Energy Storage For San Diego Utility
San Diego Gas and Electric has signed a contract with Hecate Energy Bancroft for a 20 MW energy storage system. It was reported that this amount of electricity will be enough for 28,000 households for four hours. The lithium-ion battery system will be the largest in the San Diego area.
“Furthermore, SDG&E is proud to launch an advanced energy storage facility to harness solar, wind and other sources of energy so that we can supply it to our customers when they need it most,” explained Scott Drury, an SDG&E executive.
San Diego has ranked in the top US cities for solar power, so adding energy storage there is only sensible. There is no reason why one would not expect solar power to continue growing in San Diego, so energy storage may as well.
In fact, energy storage has been recognized by California policymakers as being an integral piece of the renewable energy landscape: “Assembly Bill 2514 directed the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to adopt an energy storage program and procurement target. As a result, the CPUC established an energy storage target of 1,325 MW by 2020—the largest in the nation for the states investor owned electric utilities (Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric).”
Having renewable energy storage portfolios seems to have helped states grow their renewable energy storage resources, so it only appears to be sensible to establish energy storage goals as well. Having such goals can also positively impact local businesses because they are motivated to provide technology, expertise and labor to meet them.
Energy storage might have initially seemed like technology that owners of their own solar power systems were most interested in, however, some utilities have been coming on board, as we see with this very large system.
It wasn’t long ago that Northern California’s utility, PG&E was recognized for its 4 MW / 24 MWh energy storage system and now SDG&E is following suit with its own. The southern California utility provides energy to about 3.5 million people and employs approximately 5,000.
Image Credit: Doug Letterman, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
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20 MW from a 4 MWH battery takes 12 minutes to deplete the battery. Is it possible the number is 4MW/20MWH battery? That will provide 4MW for 5 hours to the 28,000 houses.
The 4MW/20MWh was a PG&E system. This SDG&E system is 20MW/ ???MWh yes left off an important number off. True the site that Jake copied the story from didn’t list it and (wild guess) neither called SDG&E to ask, checking facts is for old paper Journalist. In fact can’t be sure that the 20MW isn’t 20MWh since if the PR guy/gay didn’t include both they likely don’t know the difference and could easily drop the “h”. Sorry # house time # hours is worse than meaningless since ever one uses different values. Maybe I mean 1am-5am, ohhh
or 20MW / 80MWH from your description (28,000 homes for four hours…)
Yes, usually a house needs about 1 kw or 24 kwh per day. So 28,000 houses require 28 MW for 4 hours. That requires a 96MWh battery. But I am sure it will all be made clear before the comments close today.
Correction “requires 112 MWh battery” to provide 28KW for 4 hours.
Nowhere in the source article (pv-magazine) does it mention a 4 MWh capacity. I’m not sure where Jake got that number from.
I was using the quote from PV Magazine, ‘that will deliver battery capacity capable of storing four hours’ worth of electricity.’
If I arrived at the wrong figure, I apologize.
Ah, I see. As David said, 4 hours * 20 MW would be 80 MWh.
So maybe you could fix the title?
Thats the dumbest idea yet, one huge battery. Just give the money to the people for that as discounts to buy their own. From a national security view much harder to wipe out everyones batter than just one big one. Also the home owners will maintain them.