Saft Battery Installation at the Energy Technology Facility

At ACEP’s Energy Technology Facility, we have finished phase one of the installation of a new battery energy storage system, with the completion of the concrete work for the container foundation.

The battery will enhance ACEP’s Power Systems Integration Lab capabilities with a state-of-the-art BESS platform to provide the spinning reserve and frequency response use-cases that are driving current BESS deployments in islanded microgrids.

This will be a 220 kilowatt-hour/600 kW discharge/260 kW charge Intensium Max+ 20 lithium-ion battery from Saft. The IM+20 is integrated into a 20-foot ISO container and uses modular building blocks to provide the necessary energy and power. When completed, the container will be installed outside the ETF and connected to our existing ABB PCS-100 inverter. 

We expect the battery module to arrive in April 2020. We will work throughout the winter installing the cable and equipment required to integrate it into our test bed.

The battery is funded by the Office of Naval Research under a 2018 Defense University Research Instrumentation Program grant, and the UA President's Professor of Energy funding supported the installation.

 

Concrete being poured for the new Saft battery foundation outside the Energy Technology Facility. Photo by David Light.