The Homer Electric Association’s Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) ribbon cutting ceremony is scheduled for Tuesday, November 1st at noon at the Soldotna Generation and Substation Facility located near Boundary Road just outside of the Soldotna city limits on the Sterling Highway.
Tanya Lautaret, HEA Members Services Supervisor, on the ribbon cutting ceremony;
” On November 1sr we’re going to be doing a ribbon cutting event, partnered with the Soldotna Chamber of Commerce, out at the BESS project which is located at the Soldotna plant at noon. So come on out and let’s celebrate our new facility with our ribbon cutting event.”
The Homer Electric Association’s Battery Energy Storage System consists of modular batteries that are housed at the Soldotna Generation and Substation Facility. The BESS allows HEA to meet its reliability requirements without burning additional fuel.
Homer Electric Association’s General Manager Brad Janorschke stated that incorporating the BESS into HEA’s grid structure will ultimately lower greenhouse gas production by allowing HEA to utilize non-dispatchable renewable energy;
“We are excited, in fact, the batteries are installed over next to our Soldotna Generation Plant. They are Tesla megapacks. 46 and a half megawatt batteries. Very large batteries for our system. When you talk about reliability and keeping the lights on, very important on the generation side where it really is attached to the transmission system. It will not prevent our members from experiencing outages on the distribution line, for example when a tree falls on the line, when you talk about saving fuel. Our natural gas. That’s one of the things, the attributes, the batteries will bring to the system. We are pretty excited about it. they should be online later this month as we’re working with a team from Tesla to make sure they integrate appropriately with our control system.”
The Tesla Megapack, what Homer Electric Association calls the Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), stores energy for the grid reliably and safely, eliminating the need for gas peaker plants and helping avoid outages. Each unit can store over 3 MWh of energy – which is enough energy to power an average of 3,600 homes for one hour.
The BESS is capable of storing 93 megawatt-hours (Mwh) of electric power which can be delivered to HEA’s grid at a rate of 46.5 megawatts (MW) per hour.
