Duke Energy, LG Chem, Greensmith and Parker Hannifin are re-purposing the W.C. Beckjord coal plant, which is in New Richmond, OH, to be a battery-based storage facility, according to Clean Technica.
The re-purposed facility, which will store 2 MW of energy, will be a fast-response energy storage system for PJM. The story says that PJM controls the flow of electricity to 61 million people in 13 states and the District of Columbia, the story said. The re-purposing has been under way since August and was set to begin operations on November 17.
A comment from Duke’s senior vice president of commercial transmission said that locating the storage system at the retired plant enabled the company to take advantage of the grid infrastructure that already is in place.
In July, Google said that the data center it is building in Alabama will be on the site of the Widows Creek coal power plant. The plant, which is in Jackson County, is scheduled to be shut down. Instead of completely shuttering, it will become Google’s 14th worldwide data center.
