New York has started to enthusiastically embrace the megawatt Lithium-ion battery system to various applications.
Electric Power Plant in New York
Credit: Ravenswood Power Plant in Long Island City, New York. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
New York regulators recently approved plans to build the state’s biggest battery system at the aging power plant next to the East River in Queens.
According to a statement released from the New York Public Service Commission, the plan is to build a 316-megawatt system. This is reportedly powerful enough to provide electricity to more than 250,000 households for up to eight hours. The aim is to assist in stabilizing Consolidated Edison Inc.’s power grid and reduce the use of oil and natural gas.
The battery system will be based on lithium-ion technology and the Ravenswood power plant in Long Island City will be built in three phases. The first phase will be coming online in 2021.
This is amongst the latest in a series of huge energy-storage projects announced nationwide in the USA. As the price of lithium-ion batteries and officials wanting to harness the widely used technology to smooth power flows on grids, displace gas plants that only run when demand peaks and incorporate more wind and solar energy.
“Energy storage is vital to building flexibility into the grid,” New York State Public Service Commission Chair John Rhodes said in the statement.
The effective cost of a megawatt battery system has 2 elements:
1/ The cost per battery capacity ($/Wh)
Most of the people focus on the cost per battery capacity. The recent production of the Lithium-ion batteries has improved significantly to reduce the $/Wh.
However, Lithium-ion batteries are purely raw material based products. The cost of the raw material will eventually go up due to high demand like Silver and Gold.
2/ The cycle life of the battery system
Most of the large megawatt systems are guaranteed for 10 years lifetime.
In general, according to the data from one of a leading manufacturer of Lithium-ion batteries. Depth of discharge (D.O.D) affects the cycle life. Detail calculator
| D.O.D | Cycle Life | Cycle Life |
| Improvement | ||
| 90% | 3000 | 0% |
| 80% | 5000 | 67% |
| 70% | 7000 | 133% |
Instead of using the battery system at 90% D.O.D., 70% D.O.D. will improve the life cycle to 7000 from 3,000, more than double.
Assuming 1 cycle per day, 7000 cycles mean 20 years of usage without degrading.
Conclusion
A slight increase in the initial cost of the battery system will reduce the effective cost of the battery system per year ($/Wh/yr) by 50%
The author has over 20 years of business experience with large format battery cells to megawatt battery systems. To learn more, please visit Everspring.net