ESS Tech, Inc. a U.S. manufacturer of long-duration batteries for utility-scale and commercial energy storage applications, announced that it has entered into an agreement with Portland General Electric (PGE) in Oregon to test and demonstrate the ESS Energy Center platform.
The 3 MWh Energy Center is expected to come online in mid-2022 and be used to demonstrate multiple use cases, including frequency response, contingency reserve, voltage and VAR support, demand response and resource optimization. The project will be located on land adjacent to ESS’ factory headquarters in Wilsonville, Oregon.
“Building a reliable, affordable clean energy future requires us working together with industry innovators,” said Darren Murtaugh, senior manager of Grid Edge Solutions at PGE. “Our collaboration with ESS on the Energy Center will provide important learnings on our path to meeting our greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.”
“As an American manufacturer of safe, sustainable long-duration energy storage technology for a growing global market, I couldn’t be happier that the first Energy Center deployment will be right here in our backyard with Portland General Electric,” said Eric Dresselhuys, CEO of ESS. “The Energy Center platform has been developed as a flexible long-duration storage solution with a planned 25-year operating life, and this project will help PGE work towards its renewable energy targets.”
The Energy Center is the ESS “battery-in-a-building” platform designed for utility-scale, front-of-meter applications that decouples power and storage capacity to enable up to GW-scale projects with variable storage durations ranging up to 12 hours. Its environmentally benign chemistry – composed of iron, salt and water – make this solution one of the easiest to permit, deploy and maintain. Power (rate of electricity flow) and capacity (total amount of energy held) operate independently, providing the flexibility to use the battery for multiple uses simultaneously.
This announcement demonstrates the growing interest in the market for longer-duration energy storage and iron-flow technology specifically. In recent months, ESS has announced projects with many leading global energy companies including Enel Green Power, San Diego Gas and Electric, GRUPO SAESA, SB Energy and others.
