Elkins, W. Va. – April 11, 2013 – AES today announced a milestone in the energy storage industry as its AES Laurel Mountain facility surpassed the 400,000 MW-h mark of regulation service to the PJM Interconnection. Laurel Mountain, a plant comprised of 98 MW of wind generation and 64 MW of integrated battery-based energy storage resource, has entered its second year of continuous service supplying emissions-free renewable energy and clean, flexible, regulation service to PJM. AES Laurel Mountain is among the first wind generation facilities to supply critical grid stability services to help maintain the reliability of the power grid. The storage portion of the project is the largest of its kind.
The facility, which began operation in October 2011, provides a significant economic benefit to customers within the PJM electric power market. For more than a year and a half it has consistently been selected for regulation service from among competitively bid offerings in the power market, serving as a lower cost, better performing, zero-emissions, renewable energy alternative to traditional power generation for this service.
"As the largest grid operator in North America, PJM considers energy storage vital to the reliable operation of the electric system of the future," said PJM President and CEO Terry Boston. "As with any resource that participates in our electricity market, the AES Laurel Mountain storage facility is proving its worth under real-world conditions."
The energy storage facility provides fast response regulation, a critical reliability service typically supplied by power generators, but at higher levels of performance. Since the project began service on September 30, 2011, it has supplied over 400,000 MW-h of regulation service to PJM and achieved a service factor better than 98 percent. The consistent high level of performance is enabled by AES’ patented energy storage control platform.
“AES Laurel Mountain has allowed PJM to unlock value at the system level by drawing on AES’ extensive experience in advanced energy storage and the power industry”, said Chris Shelton, President of AES Energy Storage. “Utilities and system operators targeting reliability and resource adequacy can choose AES’ advanced storage arrays as sustainable, scalable tools.”
The unit’s ability to regulate up and down, by charging and discharging stored energy, enables an operating range of 64 MW of flexible capacity with no minimum generating level. To achieve a similar flexible operating capability, a thermal power generator would need to be at least 80 MW in size.
About AES Energy Storage
AES Energy Storage is a subsidiary of the AES Corporation (NYSE: AES), a company that has served utility customers around the world for more than 30 years, helping them to deliver safe, reliable power. The company is a leader in commercial energy storage partnerships, which enable utilities, power markets and renewable developers to manage projects from concept to operation. The company’s energy storage solutions allow customers to unlock value from existing power infrastructure by liberating reserve capacity, enabling renewable facilities to generate new revenue streams, improving flexibility and reliability of the power system, and meeting peak power demand. With 150 MW of resources online, AES Energy Storage operates the largest fleet of battery-based storage assets in commercial operation today. The company has over 1,000 MW in development in the US, South America, Europe, and Asia. To learn more, please visit www.aesenergystorage.com or @aes_es on Twitter.
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