(Bloomberg) — Demand Energy will install 10 battery
systems capable of storing 1 megawatt of power for use in luxury
apartments in New York City managed by Glenwood.
The $500,000 systems will be installed in nine buildings,
Erick Petersen, a spokesman for Liberty Lake, Washington-based
Demand Energy, said Tuesday. The company installed a system,
which also can provide backup power in case of outages, about
two years ago at Glenwood’s Barclay Tower in lower Manhattan.
Construction on the systems is expected to begin this month
and be completed by the end of June. Energy storage in the U.S.
is estimated to more than triple this year, according to a study
by GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association. Consolidated
Edison Inc. and the New York State Energy Research and
Development Authority said last year they’re creating incentives
to spur storage. More than 1 million Consolidated Edison Inc.
customers lost power after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
“We think the market opportunity in the state of New York,
and in and around New York City, is going to be very
compelling,” Petersen said in a phone interview. The joint
storage program between the state and Con Edison, which aims to
deliver as much as 44 megawatts of storage by June 2016, is “a
pretty significant market opportunity.”
The 100-kilowatt systems use lead-acide batteries from
EnerSys. Closely held Demand Energy is using the batteries
because they’re cheaper and also because lithium-ion batteries
can’t be used for electricity storage in New York buildings,
said Brian Warshay, a Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst in
New York.
“The use of lead acid is quite interesting because
building and fire codes prevent lithium-ion from
participating,” Warshay said in an e-mail. “It will be
interesting to see if those permitting requirements change if
lithium-ion floods into the market or remains too expensive an
alternative.”
To contact the reporter on this story:
Justin Doom in New York at
jdoom1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Reed Landberg at
landberg@bloomberg.net
Robin Saponar, Tina Davis