TERIC Power Ltd., an Alberta-based Independent Power Producer (IPP) headquartered in Calgary has received approvals from the Commission to install two 20 MW lithium-ion battery energy storage power plants, the eReserve1 and 2. Commercial operation will commence in late 2020, and the early third-quarter of 2021 respectively.
The eReserve1 and eReserve2 Battery Energy Storage Power Plant Project are the first standalone battery projects approved as power plants and will serve as the largest battery storage installation in Canada. The projects will draw electricity from the Alberta electric grid, then store and eventually release it when demand is high.
TERIC has selected Tesla Megapack batteries for the project, which according to Tesla Inc., employs a safe-by-design approach, and hazards such as thermal runaway and external fires are addressed with product-level design mitigations by Tesla. After the expected 20-year lifespan, TERIC plans to return the battery system to Tesla for full recycling.
eReserve1 will be located near the village of Rycroft and will connect to the ATCO Electric Ltd. distribution system. eReserve2 will be located near the Municipal District of Wainwright No. 61 and will connect to the FortisAlberta Ltd. distribution system.
“The project was a relatively new application of emerging technology, so there was no previous experience to fall back on to help consider the application,” says Gary Perkins, legal counsel. “We had to look for treatments in other jurisdictions or analogous situations to identify issues that needed to be considered and to fully assess the proposal.”
“The current regulation does not specifically address battery storage facilities, especially the stand-alone battery facilities,” says Sophie Jiang, engineer specialist. “Not only did we look at how other jurisdictions across the North America treat this type of facility, we also looked at the technical and operational attributes of the proposed TERIC projects in the Alberta Interconnected Electric System in comparison with other types of power plants.”
Source & Image: AUC |
www.auc.ab.ca
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