GridStor, based in Portland, has begun construction on a battery storage facility in Goleta that will include 44 emission-free lithium-ion batteries on a 2.6-acre lot on Cortona Drive.
The facility is expected to go online this fall, providing 60 mega-watts or 160 mega-watt hours of electricity, enough to power more than 30,000 households.
The battery facility in Goleta will be the largest in Santa Barbara County, and GridStor says it will bring a range of environmental, financial and security benefits to the area.
“GridStor’s batteries will be capable of storing enough power to supply the equivalent of all of Goleta’s residential customers for up to four hours in the event of a blackout,” GridStor said in a recent news release. “This provides Santa Barbara County residents another option for local reliability and reduces dependence on the highly polluting Ellwood Generating Station, a gas-powered peaker plant, and other fossil power sources.
“Batteries such as GridStor’s, which provide system reliability under a contact with the public utility Southern California Edison, ensure sustained operations and maximum utilization of clean energy while simultaneously reducing reliance upon natural gas power plants.”
Jason Burwen, GridStor vice president of policy and strategy, spoke in an event with the Science and Engineering Council of Santa Barbara on Wednesday afternoon, providing more information about the facility and discussing the energy storage technology.
Burwen said the batteries at the Goleta GridStor facility are sourced from Tesla, using lithium iron phosphate technology.
“Our system is intended to be directly connected to the distribution system that serves Goleta, so it is possible for it to be dispatched in such ways to provide local service in a resilient matter,” Burwen said.
“That’s not its primary purpose, and I do want to be clear that this is a battery that’s going to be doing daily operations with the larger California power grid, but it is a nice side benefit that it is a local resource in the event that Southern California Edison’s system becomes impeded in such a way that it needs to rely on resources within Goleta’s footprint in order to help maintain reliability.”
The battery storage facility is one of the latest steps toward local and state goals to decarbonize the economy. California is working towards a “carbon-free electricity system” by 2045, and the California Energy Commission estimates that 49,000 mega-watts of battery storage are needed to meet this goal.
“Clean energy storage projects like this one help move the City of Goleta toward its renewable energy goals and enhance our energy resilience,” Mayor Paula Perotte said in a news release. “The addition of GridStor’s storage batteries to our grid brings closer the day we will no longer need to rely locally on a gas-powered peaker plant.”
GridStor added that its Goleta facility will support 900 mega-watts of wind and solar power operated in the region, as well as further build out of the “planned 7,500 mega-watts of additional renewables there over the next decade.”
Burwen said that GridStor expects to be “substantially complete” with the Goleta facility over the summer in order to go online this fall. He added that more information will be provided about a ribbon-cutting or commissioning event.