TCEQ Awards Grant to PEC for Battery Storage Project

In 2017, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and Texas Emissions Reduction Plan (TERP) selected PEC as the winner of the 2017 New Technology Implementation Grant (NTIG) Program. PEC was successfully awarded $2 million in grant money to help fund the Pedernales Energy Storage Automation and Management with Solar (PESAMS) project. The goal of the PESAMS project is to help the cooperative achieve a cleaner energy portfolio by implementing technology to reduce the emission of pollutants, consistent with the objectives of the NTIG program, while reducing energy and transmission costs.

The PESAMS was constructed on PEC-owned land in Johnson City, Texas, and integrates the most economically and technically viable blend of energy storage available. It uses a 2.25 MW / 4.5 MWh lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) in conjunction with a newly constructed 999 kWac solar photovoltaic (PV) facility. The solar PV was constructed by contractor RES Americas Inc. using First Solar PV modules and a Power Electronics inverter. The BESS was constructed by contractor Aggreko, LLC using Samsung batteries, in-house inverters, and Energy Management System (EMS) and Sabre enclosures.

The innovative business model utilized by the PESAMS incorporates multiple storage services for integrating renewable resources to achieve maximum emission reduction, while also providing economic and operational benefits to PEC, its members, and the Electric Reliability Counsel of Texas (ERCOT) grid. The knowledge produced by the PESAMS project will be used to shape PEC’s long-term planning process.

Quarterly progress reports were submitted in a timely fashion summarizing all aspects of the project tasks. The reports can be viewed at: https://www.tceq.texas.gov/airquality/terp/ntig-projects.

For questions regarding this project, contact James Spaulding.