Detroit-based energy company DTE has announced plans to build a large-scale battery storage facility at the site of a former coal plant, The Detroit News reported.
The move to repurpose the former coal-burning Trenton Channel Power Plant into a clean energy facility is more than just symbolic, as the site is ideally located for DTE's purposes.
"It's at a strategic interconnect with our transmission system," DTE CEO Jerry Norcia said. "The transmission system was built to take a tremendous amount of power generated here into southeast Michigan to support the grid. We're going to reuse the site to its maximum benefit over time."
As the United States and the rest of the world continue to shift away from dirty, polluting energy sources like gas, oil, and coal to clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar, having places to store large amounts of that clean energy is crucial to the mission. The new DTE plant will use lithium iron phosphate batteries to stash energy generated by wind turbines and solar panels and dispense it when needed.
Eric Hsieh, deputy assistant secretary for energy storage in the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Electricity, pointed out that this new plant is one of many such battery storage facilities in the works in the United States — a very positive sign for the future of clean energy.
"Just five years ago, a 220-megawatt, 880-megawatt-hour battery plant would have been the largest in the country, but in a sign of how quickly things are changing, and thanks to DOE's purposeful R&D and the Inflation Reduction Act, Trenton is going to have a lot of company," Hsieh told The Detroit News. "It's going to join a cohort of large-scale grid battery resources that now appear in over 70 utility (integrated resource plans) throughout the country."
Other large-scale battery storage facilities are being built in Arizona, Texas, Indiana, and elsewhere.
Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the latest innovations improving our lives and shaping our future, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Cool Picks
