California battery storage company Eolian is building Ohio's largest battery plant of its kind in Licking County, aiming to bolster the electricity grid as demand from data centers grows.
The Flint Grid project will be built near the cluster of hyperscale data centers in New Albany, but the energy stored in the batteries will be used in the PJM Interconnection grid, when needed. PJM spans 13 states with a population of 65 million people.
The 200 megawatt-per-hour plant, called Flint Grid, is being built near New Albany's cluster of data centers. Despite being built near data centers in New Albany, the project won't solely benefit the massive facilities, but rather the entire grid.
It will provide power up to 1 gigawatt over five hours to the entire grid that PJM manages.
Eolian Chief Development Officer Eric Stoutenburg told WOSU that the technology can help prevent brown outs and black outs as data centers continue to tax the electricity grid. Stoutenburg compared the batteries to a sponge, pumping stored up electricity into the grid when power demand increases during hot summer days or extreme winter storms.
"When you have too much water you spilled on your floor, you could pick it up with a sponge, and when need that water back out, you just give it a squeeze," Stoutenburg said.
In a press release, Eolian described the technology as complimenting traditional grid infrastructure "by providing flexible capacity that responds in milliseconds to stabilize and back up the grid during high-risk events, while optimizing how to match power supply and demand through all hours of the day, every day of the year."
Stoutenberg said the grid will add more of these projects and could catch up with Texas, where battery storage matches about one fifth of that grid's average use.
Cleanview, a website that tracks these projects across the U.S., has a map that shows there are a few projects like these outside of California and Texas. None of the operational plants in Ohio have a capacity higher than 20 megawatts and none are in central Ohio.
"We're not alone in terms of developing these projects. We happen to be first and happen to be sited at a great location, but I think you will see a rapid expansion of energy storage across PJM and certainly in Ohio," Stoutenburg said.
The project is the first of its kind to get approval by PJM and the Ohio Power Siting Board.
Flint Grid is expected to be operational next year.
