The Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) has selected Eversource to receive up to $19.5 million in federal cost share to build upon the success of its award-winning 24.9 MW Outer Cape Battery Energy Storage System (BESS).
Advanced in partnership with Cape Light Compact (CLC) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Eversource’s Outer Cape Microgrid Optimization (OCMO) Project will coordinate and optimize diverse, customer-owned clean energy resources like solar panels, smart thermostats, and batteries with its Outer Cape BESS in Provincetown to extend the length of time the BESS can provide customers with reliable power while crews work to make repairs. The project is meant to enhance electric reliability in the Cape Cod region, employing analytical tools to demonstrate the effectiveness of using distributed clean energy resources coordinated through a Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS).
“We’re grateful to the Department of Energy for this exciting opportunity to take our battery energy storage system to the next level to help protect electric reliability for our customers on the Cape, including vulnerable environmental justice communities who continue to be disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change,” said Eversource vice president for grid modernization Jen Schilling. “This critical federal cost share will enable a creative approach to demonstrate how coordinating customer-owned, distributed clean energy resources can be cost-effectively leveraged in other storm-prone regions to equitably deliver the benefits of our transition to the power grid of the future to all our customers and communities.”
The innovative BESS
The battery is housed at the Provincetown transfer station. It’s always on and connected to the grid, fully charged, ready to automatically provide backup power within moments of an outage to the approximately 11,000 customers served by a single 13-mile distribution line on the outer Cape. Eversource shows off the system in a video on its Youtube channel:
The BESS is an innovative solution to a complex issue that avoids the need for a second distribution line along the same route as the existing line, which would have required significant construction through the Cape Cod National Seashore and could have posed environmental concerns, according to Eversource. The battery also helps to stabilize voltage along the current distribution line, which improves the flow of electricity to homes and businesses along the Outer Cape and helps reduce the frequency and duration of power outages for those customers.
Environmental justice initiatives
Eversource’s Outer Cape Microgrid Optimization Project will expand access to clean energy technologies and deliver direct reliability and resiliency benefits to 48,000 Cape Cod residents in vulnerable environmental justice communities. It will deliver workforce development benefits targeted to those communities and to the 3,200 Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe members.
Together with Cape Cod Community College, Eversource plans to develop a clean energy jobs pipeline program with stakeholders as part of the project to provide well-paying career opportunities for tribal members and residents of environmental justice communities to drive greater diversity in the clean energy industry. The plan includes collaborating with a diverse group of stakeholders to design a Community Advisory Council that will provide inputs on the signing of a community benefit agreement, as well as recommendations on the implementation of the program. As the project continues, Eversource is committed to collaborating with the Community Advisory Council, which will include the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, and all its stakeholders to ensure an inclusive and participatory process that hears and addresses the unique needs of the community.
The recent decision by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities to approve Eversource’s Electric Sector Modernization Plan (ESMP) was foundational for the DOE’s consideration of the OCMO project to receive federal cost share. Over the next 10 years, Eversource’s ESMP will significantly increase electrification hosting capacity to accommodate 2.5 million electric vehicles, one million residential heat pumps, and an additional 2.2 GW of new solar power, which are essential for achieving the commonwealth’s electrification and decarbonization goals.
Originally published in Renewable Energy World.