S&C Electric Company, a global leader in renewable energy integration based in Chicago, has been selected by BC Hydro for an energy storage project that will greatly improve service reliability for a remote mountain community in British Columbia, Canada.

A battery bank unit will store clean energy produced by BC Hydro, which can then be used to help meet electricity needs in the town of Golden during high load periods or during a power outage. The $15 million project is the first of its kind in Canada and was made possible thanks to $7.5 million in funding from Natural Resources Canada's Clean Energy Fund.

“With this investment, our government is once again demonstrating action to help position Canada at the forefront of clean energy technology,” said the Honorable Joe Oliver, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources. “This innovative energy storage project is not only encouraging clean energy investment in British Columbia but it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional technologies.”"We have been working with the communities of Golden and Field to address issues around reliability, capacity and access," said Greg Reimer, Executive Vice President, EVP, Transmission and Distribution, BC Hydro. "We are keeping the lights on in B.C. with integrated planning and the advancement of our system through the use of new technology. We are also strengthening and upgrading our existing system, which has provided power to this province for 50 years."

Golden is a town in southeastern British Columbia, Canada, located 163 miles west of Calgary, Alberta and 443 miles east of Vancouver. The 4.3-square-mile town is nestled nestled in the Rocky Mountain Trench, built around the confluence of the Columbia and Kicking Horse Rivers, surrounded by three different mountain ranges and five National Parks. Field is an unincorporated settlement of approximately 300 people located in the Kicking Horse River valley, within the confines of one of the national parks, Yoho National Park. The town and the settlement are about 34 miles apart.

The innovative energy storage solution utilizes two one-megawatt batteries—one installed at Field and a second in Golden—to provide back-up power for Field and to shave peak loads. The peak shaving application – which uses a unique approach where load is directly monitored and stored energy injected as needed – will enable BC Hydro to save on investments in transmission system capacity that would otherwise be required to meet peak demand.

 The battery in Field will store up to seven hours of reliable backup supply that could be used during an outage.  The project also involves the installation of smart grid devices that will improve response times during power outages

For this project, S&C will engineer and install a complete energy storage solution featuring S&C's Smart Grid SMS Storage Management System and IntelliTEAM SG Automatic Restoration System. This turnkey system will integrate sodium-sulfur batteries onto the grid seamlessly, allowing the batteries to support a portion of the peak load depending on demand. This integrated solution optimizes total system efficiency and reliability for the community. The batteries will be supplied by NGK Insulators Limited of Japan and the system will be engineered and installed by S&C Electric Company.

"With significant experience in designing and deploying energy storage systems in North America, S&C offers field-proven energy storage technology," said Jim Sember, Vice President, Power Quality Products, S&C Electric Company. "We continue to develop new energy storage solutions relying on distributed intelligence to help both communities – and the utilities that operate these systems – maximize benefits from these new technologies."

“We are very excited to play home to a demonstration project that is the first of its kind in Canada and one of only a few in the entire world,” said Mayor Christina Benty, Town of Golden. “I am pleased that BC Hydro, with help from the Clean Energy (News - Alert) Fund, was able to propose a solution that meets the electricity needs of Golden and Field and could help shape the electricity supply in other capacity-constrained and hard-to-reach communities across the country." "The community Field appreciates being chosen for this project and the efforts being made to improve reliability and supply. The battery storage project will assist our community when power is out, particularly during severe weather conditions which can have a significant impact on a remote community like ours,” said Craig Chapman, Chair of the Field Community Council.  Work on the battery storage project begins this summer and is expected to be complete by the spring of 2012. For more information, visit the BC Hydro website.