Battery powers rural Wellman residents

WELLMAN – Alliant Energy has installed a battery to help power homes of rural Wellman residents.

The 650-kilowatt, 2.7-megawatt-hour battery is in a rural area where numerous customers have installed their own solar panels and expanded the load on the energy grid. The battery works as a buffer to level out power fluctuations caused by changes in the sun's intensity, and provides stable electricity for the utility's customers. Previously, these challenges were met by replacing the existing lines and equipment with new lines and poles.

Alliant Energy spokesperson Mike Wagner said the battery will be able to supply customers with the same energy for half the cost of replacing the lines and poles.

The battery will also be charged and discharged to reduce costs for all customers. When fully charged, it can store enough energy to power roughly 650 nearby homes for four hours.

Wagner said the customers with solar panels provide energy to the grid. But managing this energy is not always easy. Sometimes the energy provided is small and sometimes it's immense, like on a sunny day when all the solar panels in the area are generating energy. The utility has to be able to regulate the distribution of this energy across a wide area, since some locations are producing much more energy than they consume while most are the opposite, consuming more than they produce. Moving this amount of energy causes wear and tear on the system.

The battery storage system allows Alliant Energy to keep that energy in one place, right where it's produced, and distribute it throughout its grid evenly.

Alliant Energy vice president of business planning J.P. Brummond said battery storage 'has the potential to be a more cost-effective way to modernize the grid to meet the demands of our customers.”

Wagner added that, though the battery is near Wellman, it is not actually serving the town of Wellman itself, just the rural residents nearby. Furthermore, though the main purpose of the battery is not to be a backup during power outages, it could serve that function in the event of an outage.