In Decorah, Iowa, a new battery storage project is underway, supported jointly by the Iowa Economic Development Authority’s State Energy Office, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity, Alliant Energy, Iowa State University and the Clean Energy States Alliance. The 2.5 MW battery with the capacity to store 2.922 MWh of energy is being deployed with the goal “to seamlessly connect customer-owned solar while maintaining reliable electrical service across the community.”
Currently only one electric provider serves the community, which is seeing increased installation of rooftop solar panels. This project will help avoid further upgrades to the grid, capture excess solar production during daytime hours, and have the capacity to release energy to the grid during peak demand hours. Terry Kouba, President of Alliant Energy said that “This battery project is a game-changer…using batteries can add critical capacity and may save our customers money, because a battery costs a fraction of the total to upgrade our system.”
The project is expected to come online by the end of 2020, and the project team is planning to examine results and system performance to develop lessons learned from this pilot. If you are interested in learning more about this project, the Department of Energy will be hosting a webinar on July 30, 2020 from 1:00pm-2:00pm EDT. More details and registration information can be found here.