The town of Hot Springs, N.C. will be the home of a solar and battery-powered microgrid system that will help improve electric reliability and serve as a backup power supply to the town of more than 500 residents.
The grid project, which will be developed and operated by Duke Energy, was approved this week by the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) approved Duke Energy’s renewable energy project.
“Duke Energy’s research work on microgrids has led to a large-scale effort that will better serve, not only these customers in a remote area, but also help us gain experience from this pilot project to better serve all customers with additional distributed energy and energy storage technologies,” said Zak Kuznar, Duke Energy’s managing director of Microgrid and Energy Storage Development. “Projects like this will lead to a smarter energy future for the Carolinas.”
The Hot Springs microgrid will feature a 2-megawatt (AC) solar facility and a 4-megawatt lithium-based battery storage facility.
In addition to the Hot Springs project, Duke Energy is connecting a 9-megawatt lithium-ion battery system at a Duke Energy substation site in the Asheville, N.C., area. The battery will be used to help the electric system operate more efficiently and reliably for customers. These two projects will cost around $30 million and should be operational in early 2020.
Duke Energy is a leader in microgrid technology. The company operates a smaller microgrid project In Haywood County, N.C., as well as a 95-kilowatt-hour zinc-air battery and 10-kilowatt solar installation serving a communications tower on Mount Sterling in the Smoky Mountains National Park. It is also currently working on projects in South Carolina.
Additionally, Duke Energy is closing a half-century-old, coal-fired plant in Arden, N.C., by January 2020. It will be replaced with a new 560-megawatt cleaner-burning combined-cycle natural gas plant.
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