Great River Energy plans to install a 1.5 megawatt iron-air battery system next to its natural gas peaking plant in Cambridge, about 45 miles north of the Twin Cities, sometime next year. Capturing excess energy for later useInterest in battery storage is surging as electric utilities retire baseload power plants that burn coal or gas, and add more wind and solar. Tim Walz signed a bill setting a 2040 deadline for electric utilities to transition to carbon-free sources of power. Mateo Jaramillo, the company’s co-founder and CEO, formerly worked on battery storage at Tesla. Xcel’s Chris Clark said he expects the utility will use a mix of different storage technologies, including lithium-ion batteries.
Continue reading...