Energy Storage

AES adds 908 MWh of battery energy storage in California

The company’s Luna (100MW/400 MWh) and Lancaster Area lithium-ion battery (127 MW/508 MWh) storage facilities came online in August and September 2022, respectively.
AES adds 908 MWh of battery energy storage in California
The Luna/LAB battery storage projects (Source: AES/Fluence).

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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