Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx is the first hospital in New York City to install an energy storage system.
According to bronx.news12.com, the system consists of an 80,000-pound battery that will store energy for the hospital.
Steve Lochner, program manager at NY Department of Energy Management, said the battery is manufactured in Washington State by Union Energy Technologies. It’s a flow battery and the components are primarily water and electrolyte.
The system produces 100kwh of electricity that will be fed into a subpanel at the hospital. It’s a demonstration project funded by NYC Department of Energy Management.
“It’s critical because of the infrastructure that we’re working towards in the city,” said Lochner. “This is an energy storage project. Energy storage is new to the city.”
The system is expected it to be fully operational by the end of the year.
Energy Storage in the News
Earlier this month, Engie North America and Holyoke Gas & Electric announced plans for a 3-megawatt utility-scale energy storage installation in Massachusetts that they say will be the largest in the state once completed. The new installation project calls for a series of batteries at the Mt. Tom solar array, which became operational earlier this year.
Green Charge, an Engie subsidiary, is going to operate the new system in Western Massachusetts. HG&E, the system’s customer, anticipates that the installation will optimize intermittent solar energy, reduce utility capacity costs, and remove stress from the utility’s distribution system, according to an announcement about the project.
And in September, it was announced that more than 40% of the 38 megawatts of new energy storage installed in the US during the second quarter of this year was in homes and businesses compared to 9% in the first quarter. The relatively small energy storage market is growing rapidly, driven by lower costs for battery systems as well as incentives in Hawaii and California.
The upward swing in residential and commercial installations comes during an expected decline in utility-scale projects, according to Reuters’ Nichola Groom. In October 2015, a massive methane leak at a gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon, California, prompted an energy crisis in the state. The leak, which has been called the worst in US history, led to an acceleration in energy storage projects, including a 1.5-acre site in Southern California harnessing nearly 400 Tesla Powerpacks.