Simplifying Storage: How Design & Deployment Effectiveness All Starts with Product Due Diligence

The global battery failure events of 2018 and 2019 irreversibly changed the course of stationary battery energy storage systems (BESS) safety standards. Through the efforts of countless industry professionals, model codes and standards such as NFPA 855 and UL 9540A advanced rapidly, providing a more uniform framework for energy storage systems to be evaluated.

Although BESS are now designed to these standards and codes, they are not exhaustive, leaving an enormous amount of work to properly understand these products and integrate them into a project design. Critical inputs for BESS site design are often represented differently between OEMs or not at all. Owners have difficulty portraying confidence in systems to satisfy their financiers' requirements. Product attributes change throughout the project design process, and commissioning risks frequently appear unmanageable.

Developers, EPCs and system owners alike are grappling with these difficulties, which are exacerbated by the storage market acceleration triggered by IRA. According to SEIA and Wood MacKenzie, the expected size of energy storage deployment in the next five years is 165 GWh for grid-scale storage and 8.8 GWh for community and commercial storage. With the short implementation timeline for these new deployments, the industry requires an approach that yields consistent workflows and reliable project timelines.

In this presentation, we will discuss common approaches to technology evaluation and project design inputs that stakeholders are blindsided by and have major interruption potential. We will provide a perspective on how buyers can work with their suppliers to simplify product diligence and project design processes.