by jbs020210 a3 — February 8, 2010—The Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA) and Ice Energy announced a project on January 27 that is intended to permanently reduce California’s peak electrical demand by shifting up to 64 Gigawatt hours of on-peak electrical consumption to off-peak periods every year using units that make, store, then use ice on-site to run air conditioners.
Ice Energy’s advanced energy storage system leverages the higher efficiencies associated with generating and transmitting power off-peak, storing it at thousands of distributed locations, and employing the Smart Grid to intelligently dispatch the energy during times of peak demand.
The 53 Megawatt (MW) project, which SCPPA calls the nation’s first cost-effective, utility-scale, distributed energy storage project, also allows SCPPA to enable the expansion of this storage solution for other municipal utilities and agencies in Southern California, representing hundreds of additional Megawatts, to help develop a cleaner, smarter, more sustainable power grid.
Installation of the Ice Energy storage systems will begin in the first half of 2010, with deployment scheduled over two years.
