World’s largest battery undertaking again on-line at Moss Touchdown, California
Moss Touchdown Vitality Storage Facility, at 400MW/1,600MWh the world’s largest battery power storage system (BESS) undertaking to date, is again on-line.
Proprietor Vistra Vitality had known as a short lived halt to its operation and market participation after battery overheating incidents at each phases of the undertaking.
The 300MW/1,200MWh Section I, commissioned in December 2020, went out of motion after a September 2021 incident, whereas Section II’s separate 100MW output and 400MWh of capability went on-line a month earlier than that incident, solely to be additionally switched off in February this 12 months.
Vistra mentioned in an announcement yesterday (11 July) {that a} profitable restart has been carried out with greater than 98% of the entire 400MW storing power and releasing it to California’s CAISO grid. The plan communicated earlier by the corporate, had been to have it up and operating throughout the first half of this 12 months.
Whereas the corporate had not responded to an earlier enquiry on progress from Vitality-Storage.information final month, yesterday Vistra revealed it had been incrementally starting to re-energise the battery power storage system (BESS) in Might and June.
The ultimate 2%, or 7MW, will come again on-line as soon as tools (substitute batteries and electrical elements) arrives on website and the corporate mentioned it continues to work with regulators and native authorities as restoration work goes on.
An extra growth of the ability is ongoing, the impartial energy producer (IPP) mentioned. Section 3 will add 350MW/1,400MWh of capability and the beginning of its set up was introduced in January. The corporate has beforehand mentioned that Moss Touchdown, at which BESS know-how has been put in within the former turbine halls and different elements of a former gasoline energy plant website, has the infrastructure and grid connection capability to probably be sized as much as 1.5GW/6GWh.
Certainly, California utility PG&E, which is an offtaker for Vistra’s BESS, has additionally simply deployed its personal system at Moss Touchdown, the 182.5MW/730MWh Elkhorn Battery. Whereas Vistra’s Moss Touchdown undertaking makes use of LG Vitality Resolution battery racks, Tesla provided the total BESS answer to PG&E for Elkhorn.
Batteries themselves weren’t the reason for the overheating, a minimum of not at Section 1, in accordance with Vistra’s principal investigation findings revealed in January.
As an alternative, a fault-detection system responded to an overheating air-handling unit, triggering sprinklers that “improperly” sprayed water onto battery racks, which had been working at regular temperature till the spraying occurred.
Vistra’s report additionally contained a variety of corrective actions that the corporate mentioned it could take.
Moss Touchdown Vitality Storage Facility: Timeline of the story to date
July 2018: Vistra wins offtake contract with PG&E for 300MW Section 1 of Moss Touchdown Vitality Storage Facility, whereas Tesla will get contracted to ship PG&E’s personal undertaking on the website. They are going to be among the many first large-scale battery methods with four-hour capability contracts for useful resource adequacy.
September 2018: Regulator California Public Utilities Fee (CPUC) approves the contracts.
December 2020: Vistra brings Section 1 on-line
June 2021: LG Vitality Resolution introduced it provided battery racks to the undertaking.
August 2021: Section 2 is introduced on-line.
September 2021: Overheating incident brings operation of Section 1 to a halt.
January 2022: 350MW Section 3 is introduced.
January 2022: Vistra pronounces findings of preliminary investigation.
February 2022: Section 2 taken offline after what was described as an analogous occasion of overzealous sprinkler activation inflicting issues with a variety of battery racks.
April 2022: CPUC approves PG&E’s contract with Vistra for MOSS350, the 350MW/1,400MWh BESS third section of the undertaking.
Might/June 2022: Capability again on-line.
