Milford pondering battery storage at solar site

MILFORD — A battery storage facility at the city’s solar energy site could improve the electrical grid’s reliability and allow more residents to add solar power generated at their sites to the grid.

The idea was presented at a City Council workshop May 14.

“Storage is a very fast-responding resource,” said Michael Herbert, co-founder of Lightshift Energy, an Arlington, Virginia, company that owns and operates six such projects along the East Coast.

“It’s the only thing in the energy industry with bidirectional capabilities. You can pull energy from the grid, and you can put it back on to the grid.”

Plus, the costs of doing so are coming down, making the option a more viable alternative to conventional grid assets, Mr. Herbert said. The technology is also environmentally sustainable, producing no air emissions or water effluent, and thus, the permitting process is comparatively simple.
The city is producing more solar energy, he added, but is unable to add that power to the grid via a substation.Mr. Herbert also explained that potential

revenues from such power generation could offset some of a battery storage facility’s price. A potential 8-megawatt system could include six 5-megawatt-hour containers and a couple of power conversion systems that would step up the energy to grid voltages.

The potential location, at 252 Milford Harrington Highway, poses few construction impediments, he continued.

The facility, which would occupy 0.26 acres of the 10.6-acre parcel, would need a service agreement and site plan approval from the city to move forward.

That approval process would likely take six to nine months, followed by roughly the same amount of time for construction, based on current equipment availability, Mr. Herbert said, estimating that it could be operational by late 2026.

Further, city manager Mark Whitfield said such an amenity would allow future Milford Corporate Center tenants to use solar power.

Milford is one of nine municipalities that have community-owned electric utilities and are members of the nonprofit Delaware Municipal Electric Corp.

Scott Lynch, the agency’s vice president for asset development, said DEMEC tried to obtain federal funds for a battery storage facility in Milford, but with such monies uncertain under the new presidential administration, it chose Lightshift as a capable vendor for this project.

But cost factors are outside DEMEC’s control.

“All we can do is put methods in place to retain the resources that we already have, instead of dumping them into the ground,” he said. “Our objective is to at least keep things the same, if not better.”