January 12, 2023: Power Vault Holdings is working with US utility Pacific Fuel and Electrical (PG&E) on plans to construct a battery and ‘inexperienced hydrogen’ long-term vitality storage system (BH-ESS) with essentially the most small capability of 293MWh , the companions introduced on January 5.
The system capability could be expanded to 700MWh.
The transfer comes after Power Vault chairman and CEO Robert Piconi (pictured) mentioned in a third-quarter earnings replace on November 14 that the introduction of inexperienced hydrogen into its expertise portfolio “additional confirms in our technical range in our vitality administration software program platform and out there. for hybrid brief and long-term built-in techniques”.
Piconi mentioned the corporate is positioning itself as the one vitality storage firm that provides “a {hardware} agnostic portfolio of each short- and long-term storage options, bringing the brand new gravity, inexperienced hydrogen and hybrid options to the marketplace for the primary time”.
The system for PG&E, if given the go-ahead by the California Public Utilities Fee, will probably be owned, operated and maintained by Power Vault on a one-acre web site. It’s the first challenge of its type and the most important utility-scale inexperienced hydrogen challenge within the US, the corporate mentioned.
The BH-ESS features a hydrogen gasoline cell powered by electrolytic hydrogen obtained from renewable vitality sources. Inexperienced hydrogen, additionally referred to as renewable hydrogen, is produced by electrolysis of water. The method is solely powered by renewable vitality.
The system will change the cellular diesel turbines that PG&E sometimes makes use of throughout wider grid outages to keep up the microgrid that serves the downtown and surrounding space of the Northern California Metropolis of Calistoga.
Building will start within the fourth quarter of 2023 with business operation by the tip of the second quarter of 2024.
Regional P&G VP Ron Richardson mentioned: “This breakthrough collaboration gives a template for future, renewable community-scale microgrids that efficiently combine third-party distributed vitality sources, that are anticipated to price clients beneath the benchmark which is about by state regulators primarily based on the choice. use of cellular diesel turbines.”
Final Might, Power Vault mentioned it had damaged floor on China’s first gravity-based vitality storage system.
