AES Archives https://www.power-eng.com/tag/aes/ The Latest in Power Generation News Thu, 08 Aug 2024 16:22:41 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 https://www.power-eng.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/cropped-CEPE-0103_512x512_PE-140x140.png AES Archives https://www.power-eng.com/tag/aes/ 32 32 AES Indiana to repower coal units to natural gas, add solar and storage https://www.power-eng.com/gas/aes-indiana-to-repower-coal-units-to-natural-gas-add-solar-and-storage/ Thu, 08 Aug 2024 16:22:38 +0000 https://www.power-eng.com/?p=125275 AES Indiana plans to repower two coal units to natural gas while adding solar and battery storage projects.

The total $1.1 billion investment in Indiana’s Pike County would take place from 2024 to 2026.

Petersburg Generating Station Units 3 and 4 would be repowered from coal to natural gas by the end of 2026. AES Indiana anticipates being the first utility in Indiana out of coal, pending approval of the project from state regulators.

The Petersburg Energy Center would add 250 MW of solar and 180 MWh of battery storage to AES Indiana’s portfolio. The project is currently under construction and expected to be operational by the end of 2025.

AES Indiana’s 2022 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) includes transitioning coal-powered units to natural gas and adding wind, solar and battery storage capacity over the next five years.

Recently, AES Indiana acquired 100 percent interest in Hoosier Wind, a 106 MW wind project in Benton County and announced the commercial operation of the Hardy Hills 195 MW solar project in Clinton County.

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AES adds 908 MWh of battery energy storage in California https://www.power-eng.com/energy-storage/227-mw-908-mwh-of-battery-storage-now-online-in-southern-california/ Tue, 11 Oct 2022 18:05:46 +0000 https://www.power-eng.com/?p=118317 Follow @KClark_News

AES dedicated two new battery storage sites in Lancaster, California, the Luna (100MW/400 MWh) and Lancaster Area lithium-ion battery (127 MW/508 MWh) storage facilities.

The two facilities are expected to provide a boost to California’s grid, storing renewable energy to be dispatched during periods of high demand.

Clean Power Alliance is under contract to buy power from Luna, and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) is contracted for capacity from the Lancaster facility, or LAB.

Fluence, a cloud-based software provider for renewables and storage, supplied its Gridstack product for both projects. Fluence is jointly owned by Siemens and AES.

In its own announcement, Fluence said the LAB system will use its Mosaic platform for intelligent bidding in the state’s wholesale market, operated by CAISO. Mosaic will “integrate directly with Gridstack, processing operating constraints and parameters in real-time, and employ advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence to generate bids that maximize LAB’s market earnings.”

On September 6, one of the most demanding days for the Los Angeles region’s power grid due to heatwave conditions, battery storage set records in terms of grid support.

“These energy storage systems came online at just the right time when extreme heat caused spikes in electricity demand and stressed the state’s power grid,” said Fluence President Americas John Zahurancik.

AES said that according to one Southern California power company, “CAISO records show that over 2,800 MW of battery capacity discharged to the grid that day. AES’ facilities contributed close to 280 MW of capacity during that time period.”

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Battery storage fire in Arizona is under investigation https://www.power-eng.com/energy-storage/batteries/cause-of-battery-storage-fire-in-arizona-under-investigation/ Tue, 03 May 2022 14:38:53 +0000 https://www.power-eng.com/?p=116630 Follow @KClark_News

AES said it plans to investigate the cause of a smoldering fire at one of its lithium battery storage facilities in Chandler, Arizona.

The 10 MW Dorman battery storage facility is owned by AES and provides energy to the Salt River Project (SRP), Chandler’s local electric utility.

Chandler firefighters had kept an eye on the facility since the smoldering began on April 18, according to the Arizona Republic. Hazardous gas leaks prompted first responders to evacuate nearby homes. Firefighters later used a robot to first enter the building on April 21, according to the newspaper’s report.

On April 29, after days of not detecting smoke, firefighters turned off the facility’s fire suppression sprinklers, opened the doors and added forced air to ventilate the building and start the facility drying-out process.

The fire was declared out on May 1, and the Chandler Fire Department shifted management of the building back to AES.

“We hope to begin the investigation in the next couple of weeks, as soon as the building dries out,” said Mark Miller, AES market business leader for California and Arizona. He said the investigation into the cause will “likely take several weeks.” No date was given for when the system might come back online.

Construction on the Dorman facility began in 2018. It was completed in 2019 and provides energy storage to SRP under a 20-year agreement. The 600 square-foot building contains more than 3,000 batteries supplied by Fluence, the energy storage joint venture launched by Siemens and AES.

The 10 MW, four-hour-duration storage project was built as part of a pilot initiative so that SRP would be better prepared to scale future battery storage technologies.

In 2019 a battery storage facility built by AES and owned by Arizona Public Service (APS) caught fire in Surprise, Arizona, injuring firefighters after gases built up in the storage building and combusted violently.

According to investigation findings, the fire was caused when a rack of lithium-ion batteries supplied by LG Chem, and operated by storage company Fluence, heated up and caught fire. The fire suppressant deployed to douse the fire proved ineffective, leading to a build-up of explosive gases that ignited when firefighters opened a door, sending several to the hospital.

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AES to retire over 1GW of coal capacity in Chile by 2025 https://www.power-eng.com/coal/aes-to-retire-over-1gw-of-coal-capacity-in-chile-by-2025/ Thu, 08 Jul 2021 14:00:19 +0000 https://www.power-eng.com/?p=109073 Global energy company AES Corporation has signed an agreement with the government of Chile to allow for the closure of 1,097MW of coal generation as soon as 2025.

This agreement represents the single largest coal retirement announcement by any power company in Chile to date, according to AES, and includes roughly 20% of the country’s installed coal capacity.

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Under the terms of the voluntary retirement plan, AES will retire the units as soon as January 2025, subject to the requirements of the power grid.

“The retirement of these conventional assets will remove approximately 6 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, the equivalent of taking over 2.4 million cars off the streets of Chile,” said AES president Andrés Gluski.

“Our purpose is to accelerate the future of energy, and AES Andes is a great example of how we have committed to responsibly decarbonize the Chilean electricity sector, working constructively with the authorities and our customers.”

The announcement is aligned with AES’ strategic decarbonisation plan, which includes both the sale and retirement of coal assets along with rapid expansion in the deployment of renewables. To this end, AES plans to invest $3 billion to build 2.3GW of renewables and energy storage through 2024 in Chile and Colombia.

AES has announced a target to reduce its generation from coal to below 10% on a pro-forma basis by year-end 2025 and set a new goal to reach net-zero emissions from electricity sales by 2040.

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AES pooling clean energy resources to power Google data centers https://www.power-eng.com/emissions/aes-pooling-clean-energy-resources-to-power-google-data-centers/ Tue, 04 May 2021 16:35:08 +0000 https://www.power-eng.com/?p=108503 Virginia-based AES Corp. will supply nearly carbon-free electricity to power Google’s data centers in the state.

The power generator announced it will become sole supplier of the tech giant’s data-center needs for clean energy. Under the agreement AES will start supply later this year.

See our interview with AES Chief Operating Officer Bernerd Da Santos

See PE’s full coverage of On-Site Power and Microgrids

AES will source the energy needed from a portfolio of wind, solar, hydro and battery storage which will be developed or contracted by the utility. The utility will ensure the energy powering those data centers will be 90% carbon-free when measured on an hourly basis

“Last year, Google set an ambitious sustainability goal of committing to 100% 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030. Today, we are proud that through our collaboration with Google, we are making 24/7 carbon-free energy a reality for their data centers in Virginia,” said Andrés Gluski, AES President and CEO. “This first-of-its-kind solution, which we co-created with Google, will set a new sustainability standard for companies and organizations seeking to eliminate carbon from their energy supply.”
AES assembled the 500 MW portfolio from a combination of AES’ own renewable energy projects and those of third-party developers, which were selected, sized and contracted to meet Google’s energy needs across a number of considerations, including cost efficiency, additionality and carbon-free energy profile. The portfolio assembled by AES is expected to require approximately $600 million of investment and generate 1,200 jobs, both permanent and construction, in the host communities.

This supply agreement follows on the strategic alliance AES and Google formed in November 2019 to leverage Google Cloud technology to accelerate innovation in energy distribution and management and advance the adoption of clean energy.

“Not only is this partnership with AES an important step towards achieving Google’s 24/7 carbon-free energy goal, it also lays a blueprint for other companies looking to decarbonize their own operations,” says Michael Terrell, Director of Energy at Google. “Our hope is that this model can be replicated to accelerate the clean energy transition, both for companies and, eventually, for power grids.” 

AES has worked or is developing numerous carbon-free energy projects globally, including a partnership with Kaua’I Island Utility in Hawaii and energy storage sites in California, Arizona and elsewhere.

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Renewables, energy storage and on-site power are all key parts of POWERGEN International, happening Jan. 26-28 in Dallas, Texas. The POWERGEN Call for Speakers is now open and seeking content for tracks such as Decarbonization, Digitalization, Energy Storage Breakthroughs, the Future of Electricity, Hydrogen: What’s New, Optimizing Plant Performance, the New Energy Mix (on-site power) and Trends in Conventional Power. Click here to see more and submit a session idea.

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