ComEd said it will explore battery energy storage system technology by evaluating the effectiveness of localized batteries to support around two dozen customers who live in Streator, Lostant, and Milledgeville, Ill.

The tech demo will use batteries from Sunverge Energy Inc. and Mesa Technical Associates to support ongoing grid management. Equipment includes a Sunverge battery with 6.5kW / 28kWh capacity, and Mesa batteries with 75kW / 200kWh and 75kW / 350kWh capacity. 

When determining the locations for these BESS deployments, ComEd said it identified customer areas that experienced some of the most challenging outages from 2017 to 2020.

ComEd said that traditional approaches to strengthen the energy grid include reinforcing poles, creating more paths to automatically reroute power around problem areas, and undergrounding distribution lines. It said this demonstration is aimed at identifying whether localized storage can improve reliability and resiliency in northern Illinois to limit the length and frequency of power outages, especially in more remote and difficult-to-access locations on the grid.

The deployed BESS technology is expected to reduce the impact of outages by enabling the relative handful of customers to maintain a power source when their portion of the grid is damaged or experiences a fault. While ComEd line crews assess the damage and restore power, the impacted homes would be powered by the BESS equipment. Once the outage has been resolved, customers would be reconnected to the grid.