The AUC approves largest battery storage installation in Canada
October 14, 2020
TERIC Power Ltd. has received approvals from the Commission
to install two 20-megawatt lithium-ion battery energy storage power plants. The
eReserve1 Battery Energy Storage Power Plant will be located near the village
of Rycroft and will connect to the ATCO Electric Ltd. distribution system. The
eReserve2 Battery Energy Storage Power Plant will be located near the Municipal
District of Wainwright No. 61 and will connect to the FortisAlberta Ltd.
distribution system.
The Commission has previously approved other battery
projects that would be incorporated into existing power plants (solar, wind,
natural gas); however, the eReserve1 Battery Energy Storage Power Plant Project
and the eReserve2 Battery Energy Storage Power Plant Project are the first
standalone battery projects approved as power plants and will serve as the
largest battery storage installation in Canada.
“The project was a relatively new application of emerging
technology, so there was no previous experience to fall back on to help
consider the application,” says Gary Perkins, legal counsel. “We had to look
for treatments in other jurisdictions or analogous situations to identify
issues that needed to be considered and to fully assess the proposal.”
The battery storage power plants will not create new
electricity, but will hold previously generated electricity in large capacity
batteries. The eReserve1 and eReserve2 projects will draw electricity from the
Alberta electric grid, then store it in batteries for a period of time, and
eventually release the stored energy when demand is high. The battery storage
systems will effectively return energy to the electricity grid when required
for electric system support.
“The current regulation does not specifically address
battery storage facilities, especially the stand-alone battery facilities,” says
Sophie Jiang, engineer specialist. “Not only did we look at how other
jurisdictions across the North America treat this type of facility, we also
looked at the technical and operational attributes of the proposed TERIC
projects in the Alberta Interconnected Electric System in comparison with other
types of power plants.”
TERIC has selected Tesla Megapack batteries for the project,
which according to Tesla Inc., employs a safe-by-design approach, and hazards such
as thermal runaway and external fires are addressed by Tesla with product-level
design mitigations.
After the expected 20-year lifespan of the project is up,
TERIC plans to return the battery system to Tesla for full recycling. According
to TERIC, Tesla’s recycling program would recover valuable materials from the
modules, including nickel, cobalt, copper, aluminum, steel and lithium, for
further use in batteries and other applications.
Commercial operation will commence for eReserve1 in late 2020,
and for eReserve2 in the early third-quarter of 2021.
More detailed information about the project applications and
approvals can be found in Decision
25205-D01-2020 (eReserve1) and in Decision
25691-D01-2020 (eReserve2).
