-Staff reports-
Kenneth Poole, Georgia Power Compliance and Support Manager for Renewable and Resilient Generation, speaks during the event on Wednesday at Plant Hammond. (Photo: Doug Walker)
Georgia Power unveiled its new “grid-connected” battery energy storage system to the community at Plant Hammond on Wednesday.
The system went live last Friday and is capable of producing about 57 MW of electricity for up to four hours at a time.
“We want to store energy when it’s cheap,” said Kenneth Poole, Georgia Power Compliance and Support Manager for Renewable and Resilient Generation. “We want to discharge it when the energy is expensive so we are able to bring the cost of energy down rather than put higher-cost resources online.”
There are 68 containers, with plans to increase that to approximately 250, which will be positive for the local tax base.
Some will ultimately go into areas where coal ash is being removed.
The next old pond to be remediated is the huge one just right of the Hwy 100 intersection.
The batteries are made by Tesla and are Lithium Ion Phosphate batteries that have a 15-year guarantee, but Poole said they expect to get 20 years out of the batteries.
“We feel like they’ve done a lot of things from a safety perspective,” he said. “Safety is extremely important to us here on site.”
Batteries are designed to consume themselves if there is a fire. The batteries are liquid-cooled in a closed-loop system.
Local firefighters have received extensive training in the unlikely event of an emergency situation.
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