The leading manufacturer of long-life iron-flow batteries for commercial and large-scale energy storage projects, ESS (NYSE: GWH), announced it will ship its flagship battery energy store battery platform to a solar-plus storage microgrid from Consumers Energy, Michigan’s largest utility.
The ESS Energy Warehouse uses earth-abundant and environmentally friendly materials for its electrolytes and components. It provides a durable and long-lasting storage solution for deferred renewable energy, optimizing a facility’s demand charges and smoothing out renewable energy disruptions in a constrained grid.
The first iron flow battery storage system for this microgrid project capable of providing up to 12 hours of flexible energy capacity – the energy warehouse will operate over the expected service life of more than 20 years and will align well with the lifetime of the project’s solar power generation unit.
“ESS is proud to provide our safe and non-toxic battery storage system to a leading Midwest utility serving millions of customers,” said Hugh McDermott, SVP of Business Development and Sales at ESS.
We are particularly excited that our first project for Consumers Energy is a solar plus storage microgrid – a highly beneficial solution for utility and commercial/industrial customers requiring sustainable and cost-effective energy resilience solutions.
This solar and storage microgrid will power a gas compression plant in Michigan. It helps meet Consumers Energy’s goal to “produce and store clean, renewable electricity to help the environment, reduce utility bills and increase operational efficiencies,” commented Dennis Dobbs, VP of Gas Engineering and Supply at Consumers Energy. In addition, it helps to achieve the goals set in the Energy Storage Roadmap for Michiganpublished by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE), calls for storage capacity of 1,000 MW by 2025 and 4,000 MW by 2040.