Wärtsilä Completes 250MWh Battery Storage Project In California For REV Renewables

Energy technology firm Wärtsilä completed a 125MW/250MWh battery storage project for REV Renewables in California in time to help California ISO (CAISO) deal with record heatwave conditions encountered in September 2022.

In an announcement today (21 February), Wärtsilä said the battery storage project – called LeConte – was commissioned in time to provide grid stability during the state’s record-setting September 2022 heatwave.

As Energy-Storage.news wrote at the time, California’s fleet of battery storage played a major role in avoiding widespread outages. The state now has around 4.6GW of battery storage online as of end-January 2023.

The project, pictured, was deployed for developer REV Renewables in Calexico on the US-Mexico border. It is situated at a major junction point for energy producers in the CAISO and SDG&E territories, the latter being one of California’s big three investor-owned utilities (IOUs).

It will follow the automatic generation control signal to maintain system frequency and perform peak day operations to relieve congestion on transmission lines originating from the plentiful solar PV generation in the region.

The Finland-based company provided its modular energy storage system GridSolv Quantum along with its energy management system (EMS), the GEMS Digital Energy Platform, and LeConte will be managed long-term through its Service+ solution. It is Wärtsilä’s first project for REV Renewables.

“Battery energy storage is a key component to maintaining reliability and stability of California’s electricity grid,” said Cody Hill, REV Renewables Senior Vice President, Battery Systems. “Wärtsilä worked with us to manage supply chain challenges, to collaborate with local communities and to perform site safety and training to bring this complex energy storage project online.”

The company is one of the largest battery storage system integrators globally according to IHS Markit’s report for 2021. In the last few months alone, energy storage systems it has deployed have been inaugurated in Hawaii, the Philippines and Chile while this week it revealed it was the provider for part of a large rollout in Scotland by Zenobe Energy.

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