Lightshift Energy, Blue Ridge Power Agency launch rural BESS portfolio
Utility-scale energy storage developer Lightshift Energy and the Blue Ridge Power Agency (BRPA) have announced a partnership culminating in a battery storage portfolio in rural Virginia.
The two companies will deploy their BESS projects across the state of Virginia with help from the Salem Electric Department and two other electrical cooperatives across the state. The first five projects are already in development and are expected to be online later this year, and could save BRPA utilities about $100 million over the lifetimes of the projects.
Alice Wolfe, general manager of BRPA, says she is excited to see the products come online. The savings, she adds, are a great bonus.
“Rising transmission and capacity costs have been a source of concern for some time, and these new battery projects will begin to control these costs,” Wolfe says. “The staff, boards, and council of CBEC, CVEC, and Salem deserve credit for their thoughtful and committed leadership.”
Each project will account for about 5 MW on the Virginian electrical grid, and are also connected to distributed energy resources. Once operational, the projects will be able to discharge energy during peak times, taking some off strain off of the state’s grid. That piece of the puzzle comes not a moment too soon, officials say.
Meeting new demands
In recent years, northern Virginia’s Ashburn and Loudoun Counties have become known as “Data Center Alley.” With a high concentration of data centers, the area hosts about 70% of all global internet traffic, including web giants like Amazon Web Services.
All of that infrastructure needs an outsized portion of energy on the Virginia state electrical grid. Mike Herbert, co-founder and managing partner at Lightshift Energy, says the projects his company is helping to place in the rural areas of the state will help satisfy that demand.
“As Virginia continues to increase its appetite for energy storage, electric cooperatives and municipal utilities are uniquely positioned to lead on innovative applications that directly benefit their members,” he says. “By working together with BRPA, CVEC, CBEC, and Salem, this coordinated effort exemplifies how portfolios of distribution-connected storage can offer not only significant savings to the participating utilities, but also fast and cost-effective capacity during a time that the PJM market is scrambling to bring on new resources and keep electricity prices low.”
Fleet deployments of distributed energy storage are also key for the state, he says, as they provide a scalable approach to electrical delivery. The portfolio is “VPP+,” Lightshift says, offering a faster path to capacity than normal projects that are connected to transmission.
