For New York City in 2022 for example, utility-scale energy production was 100 percent from fossil fuels, according to a recent report from the New York Independent System Operator. But New York City and the other downstate zones near it currently rely very heavily on fossil fuels. Of course, the best case scenario would be for batteries to get their power from renewable sources, like solar or wind, and the site does have a small solar canopy that could send a teeny tiny bit of clean energy into the grid. “It’s offsetting the dirty energy that would have been running otherwise,” Cohen says. The goal is to try to make the grid a little bit cleaner, or less dirty, than it would have been if the batteries didn’t exist. The power will flow back up into the same wires that charged them before, and then onto customers. ![]() They’ll be able to produce enough juice to power about 1,000 homes over that four-hour period, according to an estimate by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA. Starting around 4 pm, the batteries will be able to send their power back out into the grid to help destress the system. In the summer heat, when there’s a “grid event,” that’s when the magic happens, Cohen says. When the day begins and the grid starts experiencing more demand, the batteries stop charging. That’s a time “when the grid has extra availability, the power is cheaper and cleaner, the grid is not overstressed,” he says. It will charge gradually between 10 pm and 8 am, Cohen says. The battery storage system is designed to follow a specific rhythm. Transformer units like these convert the electricity from 13,200 volts to 480 volts. ![]() When the power does flow out of the batteries, it’s converted back to AC power again. Not only do these battery units store the power, but they also have inverters to change the AC power to DC before the juice can be stored. Those batteries are large white boxes with padlocked cabinets, and above them is fire-suppression equipment. This battery complex is actually two systems that mirror each other, so other transformers are in additional equipment nearby.Īfter those transformers do their job and convert the voltage to a lower number, the electricity flows to giant white Tesla Megapack battery units. Indeed, they do look neat-three yellowish units that take that voltage and transform it into 480 volts. Rob Vergerĭuring a January tour of the site for Popular Science, Adam Cohen, the CTO of NineDot Energy, the company behind this project, opens a gray metal door. Adam Cohen, of NineDot Energy, at the battery facility in January. That’s why before the power even gets to the batteries themselves, it needs to go through transformers. Those wires carry power at 13,200 volts, but the battery system itself needs to work with a much lower voltage. The source of the electricity for these batteries is the existing power distribution lines that run along the top of nearby poles. From power lines to batteries, and back again Here’s how it works, and why systems like this are important. ![]() The local power utility, Con Edison, recently connected the battery system to the grid. It’s intended to be able to send out those three megawatts of power over a four-hour period, typically between 4 pm and 8 pm on the toastiest days of the year, with the goal of making a burdened power grid a bit less stressed and ideally a tad cleaner. New York state has a goal of getting a whopping six gigawatts of battery storage systems online in the next seven years, and this system, at about three megawatts, is a very small but hopefully helpful part of that. Located across the street from a beige middle school building, and not too far from a Planet Fitness and a Dollar Tree, the battery system is designed to send power into the grid at peak moments of demand on hot summer afternoons and evenings. On a small patch of land in the northeast Bronx in New York City sits a tidy but potent battery storage system.
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