BP has installed a battery storage system at its 10-turbine Titan I wind farm in the rural US state of South Dakota, the first such project within the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) electric grid in the country’s interior, according to the company.

The lithium-ion technology will address intermittency by storing surplus electric power when the wind is not blowing and improving energy efficiency.

The 25MW wind farm entered commercial operation in 2009 and employs turbines built by Clipper Windpower, a US firm that exited the manufacturing side of the business.

“Insights from this project will enable BP to make better-informed decisions when evaluating and developing battery applications in the future, as well as help us to create a wind energy business that is sustainable for the long term," said BP Wind Energy chief executive Laura Folse.

SPP, which oversees the bulk electric grid and wholesale power market in all or part of 14 states, is expected to remain a main driver of wind industry growth over the next five years. Much of the best US onshore wind resource is within its service territory.

The incentive to develop energy storage within SPP has been limited by the high cost and lack of state subsidies. Another potentially negative factor are private forecasts of rising lithium carbonate and cobalt prices.

The BP project pales in size to a 100MW/129MWh Powerpack that Tesla installed in 2017 in South Australia, the world’s largest battery storage project now in operation.

Even larger projects are in the works in California, the US leader in utility-scale battery energy storage with more than 2GW installed and at least that amount expected to be installed in the future.

Transition

BP installs first wind farm battery storage system in US interior