New York: World's largest battery to prevent blackouts

The world's largest battery pack with 316 megawatts is being built in New York's Long River City district on the East River. The electricity store can supply 250,000 households with electricity for eight hours. It will be built on the site of the Ravenswood power plant, which runs on oil and gas. It has an output of 2200 megawatts. The battery is intended to stabilize the New York electricity grid, which is subject to ever increasing fluctuations due to the increasing feed-in of solar and wind power. In extreme cases, these can lead to a blackout.

The first phase of construction will be completed in 2021
The lithium-ion system is built in three sections. The first block with a capacity of 128 megawatts is scheduled to go online in 2021. The two remaining construction phases have not yet been scheduled. The battery blocks will store excess green electricity and release it again if the grid is undersupplied. While Arizona and California are already operating storage, the 316-megawatt giant is one of the first of its kind in the northeastern United States. As part of the storage construction, 16 gas turbines in Ravenswood, which are around 50 years old, will be shut down. Because of their low efficiency, the relative emissions of carbon dioxide are high.

Floating power plants as a supplement
New York is also building two floating power plants that run on natural gas. Siemens will supply the systems. They are designed so that they can be throttled relatively quickly if there is an excessive supply of electricity. If electrical energy is in short supply, it is started up. It takes half an hour each. The battery block, on the other hand, is ready to receive or deliver within seconds.

Andrew Cuomo, governor of the US state of New York, plans to install 1500 megawatts of battery storage by 2025. In 2030, it should already be 3000 megawatts. In this context, power plants that emit a particularly large amount of pollutants are to be shut down. Cuomo thus represents a policy that is fundamentally different from that of US President Donald Trump. Trump has just terminated the Paris climate protection agreement.