New York funds LDES demo projects

New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced nearly $15 million in awards to four long duration energy storage demonstration projects.

Form Energy received the largest award of $12 million. The company plans to develop, design and construct a 10MW/1,000MWh iron-air battery system with a project location still to be determined. Form Energy has signed deals to deploy its battery with utilities such as Xcel Energy, Southern Company, and Great River Energy, and recently broke ground on a commercial-scale battery plant in West Virginia.

Ecolectro, Inc. received $1.08 million to scale-up the company’s polymer chemistry and materials it expects to significantly reduce the cost of producing hydrogen by electrolysis and create a drop-in replacement for current designs. This project entails scaling laboratory-proven technologies with engineering and validation prototypes to build and test 10kW electrolysis units. The electrolyser will be deployed in a pilot demonstration in partnership with Liberty Utilities in Massena, New York.

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PolyJoule, Inc. received $1.03 million. The company plans to install a 2MWh, 167kW PolyJoule modular battery storage system in partnership with Eastern Generation at its Astoria Generating Station located in Queens, New York. This demonstration aims to prove the safety, technical, operational and economic merits of the PolyJoule Conductive Polymer BESS in a densely populated urban setting.

Urban Electric Power (UEP) received $703,965 to install a 100kW/1MWh battery storage system, anchored by the company’s rechargeable zinc alkaline battery technology. The proposed project will be designed for 10- to 24-hour applications at commercial and industrial facilities. The project is located in Pearl River, New York.

In addition to these awards, the state also opened up $8.15 million in funding to support innovative long duration energy storage solutions, devices, software, controls and other complimentary technologies yet to be commercialised.

Officials say project submissions should advance, develop or field-test hydrogen, electric, chemical, mechanical or thermal-electric storage technologies that will address renewable integration challenges, such as grid congestion, hosting capacity constraints and siting in New York City.

New York State has a goal to install 3,000 MW of energy storage by 2030.

Originally published on Power Engineering.