Battery Energy Storage
Battery energy storage has become a critical component for both centralized and distributed power grids as greater percentages of intermittent and renewable power generation such as solar and wind are added to the grid.
Microgrids with high levels of renewable penetration, use Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) to stabilize the system and synchronize the thermal, wind, photovoltaic and other generating sources. Renewable generation and load forecasting, combined with intelligent controls (IntelligentRE™) are critical to the design and operation of reliable microgrids.
Distributed Generation
Distributed power generation or distributed energy resources (DER) are typically smaller grid-connected generation sources that generate and/or store electricity. In contrast to traditional centralized generation, DER's, such as Pine Creek Power Systems™ RemoteCP™, are modular decentralized systems that have the flexibility of providing reliable power close to the load, while offering ancillary services such as peak shaving, frequency and voltage regulation, line hardening, power quality correction and backup functions to the interconnected circuit.
Our projects typically employ renewable generation sources, combined with BESS and thermal generation to allow islanding microgrid functionality. Microgrids have the benefit of being able to disconnect or island from the central grid to provide autonomous, continuous power, while also providing grid resilience.
Grid Stability & Support
With greater penetrations of grid-tied renewables, grid operators and coordinators often struggle to maintain grid stability during times when traditional electrical generation falls below the grid load. Preventing power outages or brownouts presents a significant challenge when fast-reacting energy storage, such as Battery Energy Storage Systems and automated dispatch capabilities, are not present.
Pine Creek Power Systems offers its Intelligent RE™ to provide site monitoring and control, alongside traditional utility SCADA control for advanced load shedding and other site control.
Microgrid
A microgrid, as defined by the U.S. Department of Energy Microgrid Exchange Group, is a group of interconnected loads and distributed energy resources within clearly defined electrical boundaries that acts as a single controllable entity with respect to the grid. A microgrid can connect and disconnect from the grid to enable it to operate in both grid-connected or island-mode.
As the cost of renewable energy generation technologies decline, combined with the mainstream availability of cost-effective battery energy storage systems, microgrids are becoming cost competitive for certain utility and non-utility applications. Microgrids can offer lower cost of operation when benefits such as transmission/distribution or system upgrade deferment, outage reduction, enhanced energy efficiency, easier integration and control and other ancillary services and benefits are realized for a single site.
Microgrids also offer benefits such as black-start capabilities, increased grid resiliency and often impact the environment in a greatly reduced manner due to their ability to significantly enhance the performance of both conventional and renewable generation assets. Pine Creek Power Systems™ is continually refining its IntelligentRE™ software and control system, which interfaces with the SCADA system at the power generating site to acquire microgrid telemetry, including local weather data. The IntelligentRE™ uses this data, that is stored in a local and cloud-based historian repository, to make resource usage decisions that result in lower overall operating costs for the microgrid, which are simply presented and conveyed via the dashboard interface.
Peak Shaving
Energy load leveling is a term used to describe a method for reducing fluctuations in energy supply caused by changing demand. Utilities keep spinning reserve on their grid to balance periods of high demand and fluctuating loads. This spinning reserve is essential to prevent power intermittencies including voltage and frequency irregularities and is often called upon in a rapid fashion.
Historically, a natural gas turbine or other fast-reacting thermal generation asset was used for spinning reserve or as a peaking asset. Today, battery energy storage systems (BESS) are ideally suited to, supply the peaks of a varying load or, remove the need of bringing online a new generating source to cover the short-term demand. Often a BESS, peak shaving asset will eliminate the need to install additional slow-reacting and costly thermal spinning reserve capacity.
In addition to providing other valuable grid services, microgrids and BESS are ideally suited to serve as peak shaving assets as they can be both commanded and coordinated to peak shave at a local or extended grid level.
Power Bridging
Transitioning between power sources can cause undesirable outages and potential equipment damage. Power Bridging provides a short duration energy resource that will maintain power to sensitive equipment or the entire grid or microgrid during this transition period. Pine Creek Power Systems™ provides cost-effective battery-based power bridging solutions for sites from 250kW up to 50MW that easily integrates with your existing power system. Our RemoteCP™ also provides integrated solutions for power bridging from 250kW up to 1.5MW.
Featured Projects
- LBiSat | Natural Gas Turbine and UPS Battery Storage
South Jordan, Utah, USA - NorthWestern Energy | Rural Microgrid – Beck Hill
Deer Lodge, Montana, USA - NorthWestern Energy | Solar Array- Bozeman
Bozeman, Montana, USA - Continuous Power Africa | Cellular Tower Power Systems
Various Locations - Africa
Technology
Power Quality Correction
Power quality issues such as low power factor, harmonics, sags, surges, and transients can cause premature equipment aging and failure and increased utility and power generation costs. With extensive experience in identifying and correcting complex power system issues, Pine Creek Power Systems™ has power quality correction solutions available to deploy as needed to correct these often costly problems. Power factor correction, harmonic mitigation and transient suppression are just a few of the solutions offered by Pine Creek Power Systems™. Since we continually monitors the power systems we design, build and install, we can identify and correct power quality problems as they arise on an often dynamic grid or microgrid. Our comprehensive approach to power quality correction is guaranteed to increase efficiencies and reduce operating costs at your facility.
Utility Line Hardening
During extreme weather events such as hurricanes, ice storms and fires, electric utility providers will frequently disconnect power to customers on rural overhead circuits to prevent damage to the electrical distribution system. Pine Creek Power Systems' dispatchable RemoteCP™, installed at the end of these circuits allows utilities to focus on more densely concentrated outage areas while customers on these rural circuits are being supported by RemoteCP™ power management and generation. In addition to providing power to rural customers during preemptive outages, the added capacity and reliability afforded by the Remote Continuous Power also helps defer upgrade or maintenance costs on aging and constrained distribution circuits.
Utility Scale Generation
Utility scale generation projects are typically commissioned by utility companies to provide generation, energy storage or power correction functions. These projects can range in size from under 15MW to over 4GW, utilizing either traditional or renewable generation assets. Pine Creek Power Systems™ believes that utility scale generation projects, as with all generation projects, need to be engineered with a critical eye toward efficiency, reliability, maintenance friendly operation and safety. By leveraging our wealth of experience integrating best of class system components and controls with proven engineering practices, Pine Creek Power Systems™ is confident in our ability to deliver utility scale generation projects that address the issues utilities are facing today and will face in the future with a more distributed grid.