While it has been no secret that the City of Glendale, California has been looking to re-power the aging gas-fired Grayson Power Plant with renewables, details the scope of that project, as well as the carveouts for each specific type of generation proved to be scarce.
That all has changed, however, as the city has released a plan to replace all but one of the plant’s existing generation facilities with a mix of battery storage, distributed solar and geothermal energy. Broken down by capacity, the plan calls for a 75 MW, 300 MWh battery energy storage system, up to 50 MW of distributed solar projects, energy efficiency and demand response programs. not all of the gas is going by the wayside, however, as a 50 MW simple-cycle gas turbine known as Unit 9 will remain, and Glendale will retain rights to the 50 MW Magnolia power plant in Burbank.
The plan also proposes the addition of 93 MW of “peaker” gas generation from up to five combustion turbines.
And if you’ve ever doubted that strong policy leads to real change, know that the City of Glendale has stated that the plant’s re-powering is being done pursuant to SB 100. That bill is the clean energy mandate passed last year, which has a looming benchmark of 60% renewable generation from utilities by 2030, on the way to its 100% clean energy by 2045 mandate.
This now marks the second California power plant this month that is set to be replaced, at least partially, through battery storage. The other is an infamous jet fuel-burning plant in Oakland, set to be replaced by a 20 MW, 80 MWh battery storage system.
In fact, this news from Glendale will likely mark the final bit chapter what has been the month of the battery. Battery deployment is likely the next domino to fall in the path of the energy revolution, and with those future capacity predictions from the Energy Information Administration and the wild increase in year-to-year battery investment, it’s falling fast. What’s especially exciting is that not only are we now seeing large-scale batteries as a solution for retiring power plants, but these batteries are now being fed by distributed energy. Every day, the dream of a grid built upon distributed generation becomes less of a hope and more of a reality, thanks to town like Glendale.
Edit 7/31/19 – This article was editing following confusion about the role of gas in the city of Glendale’s future the article mistakenly reported that the Grayson Plant wpould keep 50 Mw of gas on-line. this has been corrected to 50 MW with Glendale retaining rights to a plant with another 50 MW. The 93 MW of gas peakers have been proposed, not approved nor retained. We apologize for the error.
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It will be interesting to see if the more inland Glendale can adapt to using the 4 hour back up supplied by the energy storage system. During the summer months will the total of 168MWh for four hours be enough to get over the summer draw peak in the late afternoon into the early evening hours?
There are a few errors here worth clearing up. The article mistakenly refers to Glendale retaining 93 MW of peaker units – those units have not been installed yet and in fact have not even been approved. It’s quite possible they will never get deployed. What Glendale will be retaining is one simple-cycle gas turbine at Grayson with a capacity of about 50MW which they call Unit 9. It also will retain rights to its share of the Magnolia power plant in Burbank which comes to close to 50 MW. So there will still be almost 100 MW of local gas capacity available to Glendale even after they retire the old units at Grayson. They real story is that Glendale proposed a 262 MW gas plant made up of 2 simple-cycle and 2 combined-cycle units. They are now proposing 93 MW of peaker units and the rest made up of batteries and distributed clean energy resources. The community continues to challenge the 93 MW of peaker capacity and believes this too can be replaced with more distributed energy, distribution system upgrades, and better resource sharing with neighboring utilities.
Would it have been too much to expect the article to supply the MW total for the “aging Grayson power plant?” If “Unit 9” is 50MW, are there 9 units? 10? 30? How often does Glendale have a run of cloudy and rainy days? How much it the solar capacity inhibited during those runs? Absent the solar production, is the gas alone sufficient to provide all of the needed power?
Lacking the answers to those kinds inquiry, the article seems more like cheerleading than a serious report.
Thanks for reading pv magazine. It doesn’t matter how often Glendale has cloudy or rainy days. Glendale is not an island, it is part of the CAISO grid and the Western Interconnection, which stretches to the Rocky Mountains.
There is a wealth of technical information out there that shows that when you spread PV generation over a sufficient geographic area local weather effects are balanced out.
The Glendale Water & Power website indicates that “The existing generation facilities (with the exception of Unit 9) would be replaced with a combination of combined cycle and simple cycle gas turbine generation units.” I.e., the plant is being repowered with natural gas.
http://graysonrepowering.com/#overview
Battery storage and solar will be “added after the repowering is completed,” according to the FAQ: “Will GWP install any renewable energy sources at Grayson?”
“Yes, GWP will be placing solar panels onto the new buildings at the Grayson Power Plant, totaling approximately a ½ MW. GWP also plans to install 40 MW/80 Megawatt-hours (MWh)*** of short-term battery energy storage for regulation purposes at Grayson to reduce short-term cycling of the units. This will be done after the power plant is repowered.”
http://graysonrepowering.com/#faqs