Finnish technology group Wärtsilä has secured an engineering, procurement, and construction contract from Duke Energy for three battery storage facilities in the US.
In North Carolina, Duke Energy’s Asheville (8.8MW) and Hot Springs (4MW/4MWh) facilities will receive battery storage facilities under the contract. These are part of the company’s $2bn grid modernisation programme in western North Carolina.
The third energy storage facility is Duke Energy’s Crane project, located in Indiana. All three storage project sites are expected to be commissioned during 2020 and 2021.
A Wärtsilä spokesperson said the company would use its GEMS energy management platform in the projects. It will also use the software for planned battery sites and solar assets across six energy distribution areas.
The company said this will enable North Carolina facilities to dispatch energy, provide emergency backup power and balance the local grid.
Wärtsilä energy storage and optimisation vice-president Andrew Tang said: “Duke Energy is specifically utilising the GEMS Fleet Director and GEMS Power Plant Controller to monitor, assess and optimize deployments across multiple regions in real-time and integrating GEMS as a data source for their specialised algorithms and analytics.
“GEMS will be customised for Duke Energy’s deployments to increase grid resilience at sites that require energy storage backup and to ultimately facilitate the first-ever entry into the Midcontinent Independent System Operator market.”
