Wärtsilä Wins Energy Storage Projects

Wärtsilä has contracted with Duke Energy, for the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) of three battery storage facilities in the US.

These facilities will be located in North Carolina and Indiana. Additionally, Wärtsilä’s GEMS advanced energy management platform will be deployed across the utility’s existing and planned battery storage sites and solar assets across six energy distribution areas. The projects include Duke Energy’s Asheville (8.8MW/8.8MWh) and Hot Springs (4MW/4MWh with 3MWdc/2MWacMW solar generating system) project sites as a part of the utility’s US$2 billion grid modernization program in western North Carolina, as well as Duke Energy’s Crane (4.95 MW/5 MWh) project which will be in Crane, Indiana. Wärtsilä will be providing all three facilities under an EPC contract.

Wärtsilä said its GEMS platform was selected for its real-time control and protection, revenue stacking, and fleet visibility capabilities. GEMS will allow the North Carolina facilities to dispatch energy, provide emergency backup power, and balance the local grid, while also introducing more clean energy into Duke Energy’s service territory, the companies said.

“This collaboration with Duke Energy is a significant milestone for us,” said Andrew Tang, vice president, Energy Storage and Optimization at Wärtsilä Energy. “Duke Energy is specifically utilizing 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 specialized algorithms and analytics. GEMS will be customized 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.”

The three storage project sites are expected to be commissioned during 2020 and 2021. Additional GEMS software deployments will be taking place across further energy storage sites over the next several years.