85 MW Energy Storage Project For STEM In California

November 12th, 2014 by Jake Richardson

San Jose, California–based STEM has been selected for an 85 MW distributed energy storage system by Southern California Edison. 85 MW is a big system in terms of energy storage, and all of it must be operational by 2021. (Note, though, that STEM has an even larger system in the pipeline for next year.)

“We could put thousands of our systems in buildings throughout a highly congested area and serve as a virtual peaker plant,” said STEM CEO John Carrington. A peaker plant is one that usually only operates when there is peak electricity demand. For example, during the hottest part of the summer when air conditioning use is highest, peaker plants may come online to add extra electricity to the grid. Peaker plants generally burn natural gas to turn turbines which make electricity, but STEM uses lithium-ion batteries.

Of course, lithium-ion batteries don’t produce emissions when used, a major benefit of this option. They are also much more responsive to and can quickly adapt to changes in supply or demand. They also have smaller land requirements. A 98 MW peaker plant in the Central Valley is located on a 15 acre parcel of land. A proposed peaker plant for Ventura County was linked to a 16 acre parcel.

In Northern California, a different STEM project could be using 1.2 MW to 3.6 MW batteries, so it would be possible the company could do the same in the Los Angeles area.

Nearly 70 Extended Stay America hotels in California are getting STEM battery systems. This addition is designed to help them avoid peak electricity charges, but it might also provide some backup in the event of an outage. If there were thousands of STEM systems in buildings, imagine how that could help grid stability and perhaps also reduction of peak power prices.

Los Angeles is no stranger to power outages, and having at least a little backup in the form of distributed battery systems could surely help out a bit.

The drought in California has made wildfires more probable, which can damage electricity transmission lines and result in blackouts. The more battery backup and responsiveness in the grid we can build, the better we can manage such issues.

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Tags: California, Los Angeles, peaker plants, Southern California Edison, Stem

About the Author

Jake Richardson Hello, I have been writing online for some time, and enjoy the outdoors. If you like, you can follow me on Google Plus.

APEppink

Good idea without a doubt. But a bandaid, having no substantial cost eff gridscale effect. Lib playtoy; niche mkt.
Robert Pollock

Megawatt hours is one million watts amount of power delivered in one hour. The abbreviation is “mwh”.
Kilowatt hours is one kilowatt amount of power delivered in one hour.
On an annually average day our house consumes about 30 to 40 kw, over a 24 hour period. Around supper time, we’re probably using 5 to 10 kw per hour, at 2 am, about .5 to .10 kw per hour. 85 mw as they refer to it in the article isn’t that much power. In my head I get 1,000,000 watts ( 1000 kw) / (our house, 33kw/day) 33 = 30 days worth of power from one Megawatt. The whole 85 mw would run our house for 85 months/12=7 years. Or 85 houses could run for a month.
If the battery plant could supply 85 mw per hour, forever, that would increase the house numbers above by a lot, but you can’t calculate exactly how much because the rate of use varies so much. There would still be ‘high and low demand’ periods. Once again, large scale is unable to finesse. Smaller distributed systems will always be more efficient and much easier to deploy.
Edison won’t get in that parade however, because it would be their last.
George Harvey

It would have been nice if the article explained what STEM is – even a single subordinate clause would have been enough. A web search for “STEM San Jose” produced a lot of results relating to schools and education. A look at Wikipedia produced nothing at all. A search for “STEM CEO John Carrington” finally worked. I should not have to struggle to find out what an article says.
- Robert Pollock
  
  I hear you, writers these days keep missing the ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘where’ parts, relegating most of their information to the “too vague to be useful’ pile. They’re even worse with acronyms. I was taught to never use an acronym unless it’s already explained. They don’t date their work so things written five years ago are still viewable, I always look for a date first. No date, no read.
  I’d guess at STEM; Storage, Temporary, Energy, Managed. What’s your guess?
  I hope the author reads this and is embarrassed.
  - Calamity_Jean
    
    Based on the company’s own website, (http://www.stem.com/) it appears that the name of the company isn’t “STEM” like an acronym, but “Stem, Inc.”. I got this from the bottom of their main page: Copyright © 2014 Stem, Inc. Why it’s called that I have no clue, but it apparently doesn’t stand for anything.
Philip W

And 85MW for how long? That’s a very important information that I see missing in a lot of battery storage news.