Eos Awarded $2.1 M for Ground-Breaking Battery Demonstration

Eos Energy Storage today announced plans to demonstrate its novel grid-scale battery system at PG&E’s Smart Grid Lab in San Ramon, Calif., with the support of a $2.1 million award from the California Energy Commission. Eos has developed a safe, long-lasting Aurora battery system that can be manufactured at a fraction of the cost of existing energy storage solutions. Eos’s technology will help to incorporate renewable energy such as wind and solar while reducing peak demand on the grid. For the project, the company is partnering with industry leaders Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab), Stem, and ETM Electromatic (ETM).

As part of California’s Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC), the funding supports development of innovative, grid-level advanced energy storage technology solutions. The Energy Commission gave Eos’s project the highest ranking among 28 competing proposals and awarded $2.1 million from a total funding pool of $6.3 million. The project was the only advanced battery storage system selected.

“We’ve developed an energy storage solution designed specifically to meet the requirements of California’s utilities and industrial users. At a price of $160 per kilowatt-hour, we believe our batteries will compete with gas peaking plants and copper wire to provide both peak generation and infrastructure benefits,” said Philippe Bouchard, Eos Vice President of Business Development. “We’re excited to work with the Energy Commission and a group of world-class partners to demonstrate the benefits of this system to the state of California.”

PG&E’s Smart Grid Lab will install and test the AC energy storage system, which integrates Eos’s Aurora DC battery, ETM’s state-of-the-art power electronics, and Stem’s intelligent software, featuring real-time data analytics and controls. EPRI will provide program management and data validation services and coordinate safety, interconnection, and system integration requirements. Berkeley Lab will use real-time grid simulation to characterize performance and quantify system benefits under dynamic load and renewable integration use cases.

“Energy storage is likely to be a key element of the integrated grid and successful integration requires a complete understanding and characterization of the performance, controls and interactions under a wide range of system conditions and scenarios,” said Mark McGranaghan, Vice President of EPRI’s Power Delivery and Utilization research. “This testing and demonstration project will help pave the way for much broader deployment of energy storage systems.”

The project will test Eos’s Aurora product as the company ramps up manufacturing to deliver MW-scale batteries in 2016. The first of these systems, the Aurora 1000|4000, is a containerized DC battery system that can provide 1 MW for four hours of continuous discharge to shave system peaks and defer costly transmission and distribution upgrades. The battery also offers fast-responding surge capability to balance power fluctuations associated with intermittent renewable generation.

“Storage cost reduction is the key to breaking this market wide open,” said Stem’s Vice President of Technology, Ben Kearns. “However, batteries need to be managed and software deployed to capture maximum benefits. Stem’s software platform and proven analytics will add value to a new battery chemistry like Eos's in early deployments and in fleet management when they move to full-scale production."

Eos is working with its Genesis Partners—Con Edison, NRG, GDF SUEZ, Enel, and others—to optimize product offerings as it ramps up manufacturing. Eos expects to offer the industry’s lowest cost turn-key energy storage solution through partnerships with major power controls suppliers and system integrators who will sell, install, and service the AC-integrated product. Commercial volumes of Eos’s MW-scale Aurora systems will be available beginning in 2016.