Julia St. Germain, Breaking Energy Staff
Parker Hannifin (NYSE: PH), an American energy company, recently announced the completion of the Cochrane energy storage facility, a project undertaken with AES Gener. The partnership with the Chilean energy producer and supplier has resulted in a large plant located Mejillones, Antofagasta, Chile. The facility will provide spinning reserve and grid reliability services to Northern Chile, part of the Norte Grande Interconnected System. This system in particular primarily provides energy to the country’s mining operations, which take place in the north. The facility can provide 20 megawatts of energy storage.
AES is also partnered with Parker Hannifin in the building of an energy storage facility in San Diego, California. The contract with San Diego Gas & Electric includes the installation and commission of two storage arrays, which will help energy reliability and renewable energy grid integration. 75 megawatts of flexible storage capability will be added to the grid when completed. One of the arrays included in this project is in Escondido, supplying 30 MW of the power. When completed, this array will be the largest battery-based storage project in the United States.
The storage containers for the Chilean Cochrane project were commissioned and manufactured in Charlotte, North Carolina. It consisted of ten 2.2 MVA outdoor 890GT-B PCS and 2-MW containers. These units are essentially large batteries, and the storage allows for better integration of both traditional and renewable energy. Renewable energy sources provide high-output fluctuation, making it hard to match supply and demand. This is especially true of solar and wind energy. Storage facilities such as these allow for better management of the difference between forecasted and actual energy usage and production, which increase price efficiency. Furthermore, some analysts have gone as far as to suggest that renewable energy sources will not be able to effectively penetrate the energy market without extensive battery and storage systems in place.
Jim Hoelscher, General Manager of the Energy Grid Tie Division at Parker Hannifin, had the following to say concerning the project’s completion: “We have a proven record of accomplishment in engineering and commissioning advanced battery energy storage systems around the world, and we look forward to meeting global demand for clean energy solutions for many years to come. Our power conversion systems are highly scalable and can be customized for many applications, making them ideal for use by AES, our longtime partner.” This scalability is of particular importance as the rise of renewable energy will require more energy storage units across the world.
The Cochrane project added 20 megawatts of storage capability to Chile’s grid. The US as a whole has over 21.6 gigawatts of energy storage, and the world as a whole has 149.91 gigawatts (as of June 2016). Between 2013 and 2016, storage facilities in America increased 105%. However, the US falls behind in terms of how much energy is cycled through these storage facilities; only 2.5% of delivered electric power comes from a storage facility. This compares to 10% in Europe, and 15% in Asia. As America and other industrialized countries transition from traditional to renewable energy, the need for storage facilities will certainly increase.
However, Parker Hannifin is not the only energy company to begin capitalizing on these trends in the energy market. Sumitomo Corp of Americas has begun operation on an innovative battery power storage system in Ohio. Like PH, Sumitomo believes the need to manage supply and demand of energy is of utmost importance in this current market. Both giants are currently competing for control in this space.
