NorthStar and City Utilities of Springfield Enter Joint Energy Storage System Project

In a recent release, NorthStar, the Swedish-American energy storage provider, has presented its partnership with City Utilities of Springfield, Missouri, within the area of Energy Storage Systems (ESS). The initial demonstration deployment in the Springfield electricity grid reportedly to evaluate how Springfield's energy supply can be made more efficient and sustainable, and will be using NorthStar BLUE+ batteries monitored by the remote management solution NorthStar ACE.

The need for utilities to reduce peak power demand on generation, transmission and distribution systems has created a need for battery storage to fill reliability gaps and cut peak costs. Utilities strive to optimize transmission and distribution of the electric grid, among other objectives.

“The ESS market is expected to grow to USD 200-400 billion by 2040 and represents a significant growth opportunity for NorthStar,” said Hans Lidén, CEO, NorthStar. “In light of this global development, and given this partnership's importance specifically for Springfield, our joint project with City Utilities is very important.”

The energy storage solution in Springfield will be deployed next to an electrical substation located in southwest of Springfield. The project is designed to support the growing region, and new business developments are currently under construction. It will be carefully evaluated to determine the benefits of battery storage with respect to managing future system peak loads for City Utilities.

“We're very excited with this opportunity to work with our community partner NorthStar on this pilot project,” said Scott Miller, General Manager, City Utilities. “The opportunity to provide a platform for research that supports renewable integration options for our customers and potentially globally is something everyone at CU is excited about.”

NorthStar ACE is a remote monitoring system combining Bluetooth communication with an Internet of Things (IoT) cloud service, built to aggregate and display data on a system level and require only a few clicks to display detailed data for a single battery. The joint ESS project will be deployed in September 2017.