Stories & features

How batteries help everyone

There are some obvious reasons why installing a battery-based energy storage system is a great way to make your business more efficient. Batteries can provide electricity during outages and are a greener alternative to diesel backup generation. But did you know that a battery can also help you during demand response events to reduce peak loads on the grid?

Demand for electrification in B.C. is growing steadily. And while switching to clean electricity helps to reduce greenhouse gases dramatically, the amount of electricity required by the province will begin to overtake infrastructure capacity within a decade.

We're busy implementing all kinds of solutions today that will help everyone tomorrow. And one of them is our energy storage incentive.

6 ways energy storage can help your business

There are many benefits to adding an energy storage system to your facility. Here are six reasons why you might want to consider purchasing and installing a battery with the help of an incentive:

1. Increased reliability and resiliency

Depending on the size of battery you choose, your facility would be able to continue operating during a power outage, maintaining productivity and avoiding downtime.

2. Reduced greenhouse gases (GHG)

A battery is a great replacement for a diesel backup generator because by not burning diesel, you’re reducing your GHG output.

3. Power quality

Batteries also offer better power quality than diesel generators. In an outage situation, a diesel generator might take several minutes to kick in, forcing mechanical systems to be shut down and restarted. But the time a battery takes to kick in can be measured in milliseconds, resulting in a seamless transfer of power.

4. Defer site or panel upgrades with electrification

If your facility has a 200 amp service and you want to replace some fossil-fuel based equipment to electric, you might be looking into moving to a 400 amp service, which requires several site and panel upgrades. But with a battery, you could defer those costs because your battery would absorb the extra load.

5. Storing excess solar energy

If you generate solar energy on site to help power your facility, adding a battery would enable you to store any excess or unused solar energy during sunny periods and then discharge it as needed to manage your energy usage.

6. Demand management

As we mentioned at the beginning, there's also a lesser known, but very significant reason why you might want to take advantage of energy storage: demand management and demand response. We asked Paul Seo, Senior Product Manager with BC Hydro, to explain what it is and how it works.

"About 20 times a year, we get periods of very high demand on the grid. When this happens, we call demand response events where we ask customers to reduce their usage for up to four hours," says Paul. "If you purchase and install a battery through our energy storage incentive, you're required to take part in these events – but instead of having to reduce your usage, you just nominate how much energy you're going to use from your battery instead of from the grid."

"We'll be able to manage your battery remotely," says Paul. "It's called demand response. Based on the total capacity of the battery, the customer allocates a nominated amount for BC Hydro and a reserved amount for the site. We can send out signals from our Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) to discharge the battery during demand response events, based on how much energy you've nominated. But your nominated value can't exceed your previous winter average peak."

Here's how it works:

Normal usage (100 kWh is an example)

Let’s say that on a normal day, you’re using 100 kilowatt-hours (kWh) from the grid to power your facility and keep your battery charged.

Demand response event 

Let's also say that you have a battery with 100 kWh available capacity. If you nominated to use 70 kWh from your battery to power your facility during demand response events and you reserved 30 kWh for your own site management, we'd send signals to your battery to discharge it up to your nominated amount. This would mean that you'd reduce the power you're using from the grid down to 30 kWh.

"Over the last 12 months, we called 18 demand response events," says Paul. “So that's 18 days out of 365. For the remainder, you’d be free to discharge the battery however you like. It’s just on the days we call the events that you can only use the reserved power and not the nominated.”

Save on battery costs

While batteries clearly offer many benefits, their high price means adoption has historically been slow. "That's why our energy storage incentive offers up to 80% towards the purchase and installation costs of new batteries for commercial or small industrial customers on a distribution rate with a working smart meter,” says Paul. "We really want to incentivize our customers to add energy storage and transform the market."

Could the energy storage incentive help your facility?

If you're interested in adding batteries to your facility, here are four ways to find out more about the energy storage incentive:

• Visit the demand response for business page.
• Send us an email.
• Contact your Key Account Manager or Regional Energy Manager.
• Call 604 522 4713 in the Lower Mainland or 1 866 522 4713 elsewhere in B.C.