Overview

In 2013, the State of Washington (USA) appropriated funding for creation of the Clean Energy Fund to expand clean energy projects and technologies state-wide. Of the $36 million allocated to the Clean Energy Fund, $15 million was appropriated to Smart Grid Grants to fund competitive battery energy storage system projects to improve the reliability of intermittent renewable and distributed energy through energy storage and information technology including the ability to dispatch energy storage resources from utility control rooms. Three contractors were awarded grants to support battery storage projects, including Avista Utilities, Puget Sound Energy, and Snohomish PUD.

Project Solution

PSC partnered with Seattle-based energy storage software vendor 1Energy Systems and Snohomish PUD in Washington State, to deploy a one-megawatt battery energy storage system based on Modular Energy Storage Architecture (MESA) and the 1Energy Distributed Energy Resource Optimizer (DERO).  MESA is a set of non-proprietary design and connectivity standards developed by an industry consortium of electric utilities and technology suppliers that intends to provide a scalable approach for energy storage control system integration and optimization. DERO provides the user interface and resource optimization for the scheduling of the distributed resources.

PSC Services

PSC’s expert Operations Technology engineers provided conceptual design and system integration services to allow for the communication between the SCADA system and the MESA based 1Energy Intelligent Controller ™. PSC also provided the integration between the SCADA system and the 1Energy DERO system.

Outcome

The goal of battery energy storage projects like the one at SnoPUD is to capture clean renewable power produced from distributed energy resources like solar panels, hydroelectric dams and wind turbines, during non-peak hours when generating costs are low. This captured energy is stored in the batteries and dispatched back to customers when demand is high, or when the cost of generation is high, saving the utility money.