Battery storage is reshaping the U.S. electricity grid. There are more than 900 utility-scale battery storage projects across the country that enhance grid reliability, manage peak electricity demand, and store renewable energy from solar and wind farms. Most of these facilities are located far from urban areas but the Cormorant Energy Storage Project currently being built is located in Daly City, California, a city of 100,000 people located just 8 miles south of San Francisco.
The battery facility will be the largest located in a major urban area in the country. It will be large by industry standards, comprising 250 megawatts of Tesla Megapack battery containers. It will be capable of discharging for four hours straight, delivering 1 gigawatt-hour of total stored energy.
The system developer, Arevon, has contracted out 15 years of power to MCE, one of California’s biggest community choice aggregators. A CCA is an entity that purchases electricity on behalf of local residents as an alternative to conventional for-profit utilities. CCAs are an attractive option for communities that want more local control over their electricity sources, more green power than is offered by their regular utility, and – in some cases – lower electricity prices.
The 11-acre site is just southwest of the Cow Palace, an area that has been the site of basketball and hockey games, political conventions, rock concerts, and rodeos. Construction of the battery facility is underway and it is expected to come online in about a year.
