Caption
The Mossy Branch Energy Facility is located in Talbot County, Ga. The 65 MW plant can power up to 55,000 homes.
Credit: Georgia Power
Section Branding
Header Content
Georgia Power, local leaders celebrate state’s first battery plant opening. Take a look
Primary Content
Thursday’s celebration to bring batteries into Georgia’s energy mix was a highly-anticipated milestone for Georgia Power.
A new 65 megawatt battery energy storage system named Mossy Branch Energy Facility in Talbot County is live. It features 6,700 batteries in 208 gray enclosures on 2.5 acres that store energy from the grid and provide energy when it’s needed during peak demand.
“On a cloudy day like today, our solar assets are not putting out 100% … if you hear the beautiful hum behind us these batteries are being charged by the grid and when we need them they can be discharged back onto the grid,” Kim Greene, CEO and president of Georgia Power, said to a group of local leaders at the Mossy Branch BESS facility opening. “It’s a wonderful asset.”
Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols emphasized Georgia is a reliability-centric state.
Greene thanked Echols and said he had a lot to do with the vision of batteries in the early days of the development.
“This (Mossy Branch BESS facility) will help us enhance reliability and resilience from years to come,” said Rick Anderson, senior vice president of Georgia Power’s east production group. “This will help through peak power demands or unforeseen disruptions — this where we’re standing — this is where it’s at.”
Everyone on-hand for the event was enthusiastic about the new development.
“I am so happy and excited to be here,” Rick Anderson, “This is a big deal. It will supply safe, affordable energy for years to come. It’s historic for all of us.”
Anderson said one of the things that makes this so reliable is the speed to get onto the grid.
“Coal assets take 10 to 15 megawatts per minute to ramp up, combustion turbine 40 to 60 megawatts per minute, this site takes 0.175 seconds to ramp up,” he said. “It’s instantaneous.”
The lithium-ion batteries, which come from China, have a 20-year lifespan and a rate of 1-2% degradation per year, according to Anderson.
The lay of the land
A low and subtle hum blankets the area of mainly gray 6-foot-by-6-foot enclosures, transformers and inverters.
During a site tour, state Rep. Teddy Reese (D-140) asked Georgia Power Project Manager Sybelle Fitzgerlad whether this is just a back up facility.
“We shouldn’t think of this as just a backup spot, right?” he asked. “We should think of this as an integrated function of a grid, it’s just as involved as a hydro dam or coal plant?”
“That’s right,” Fitzgerald replied.
Inside the enclosures are rows of black rectangular boxes and orange cords. They thread together to store and convert DC and AC currents to transformers and substations. The design, engineering and procurement was done by Wärtsilä, a Finnish company.
Georgia Power officials and Tim Echols applauded the partnership with Wärtsilä.
“They designed the enclosure and wiring,” she said. “How you wire it makes the difference in efficiency.”
Inside the enclosure it is completely temperature controlled so it can stay cool on very hot Georgia days or warm on the colder days. There were no safety incidents during the years-long construction, according to Fitzgerald.
Lots of geotechnical analysis, 100-year flood analysis, soil analysis, and drilling into the ground was done to ensure these are safe from extreme weather, she said.
It has all of the smoke and gas detection, audible alarms, strobe lights, and cameras monitoring the facility 24/7.
Thousands of lithium iron phosphate batteries are working around the clock to store energy. Fitzgerald said LFP is “more stable and more safe than NMC lithium-ion batteries because they are less likely to go into thermal runaway.”
The decision about when to use it is done by an algorithm, according to Fitzgerald.
The plant is run on an Automatic Generation Control, which uses algorithms to determine where the transmission grid has needs.
“This is how we met reserve margins and customer demand,” Fitzgerald said.
How Georgia got here, where it’s going
Originally slated to begin operating in the summer of 2024, the 65 MW facility that can power up to 55,000 homes in 4 hours officially went online Oct. 23.
“This was our first utility-scale battery so we wanted to take our time, take extra caution, and make sure all cyber connections were taken care of properly,” Anderson said.
Other states such as California, Texas and Florida, added battery energy storage systems to their energy mix years ago and have thousands of megawatts of BESS.
In 2019, the Georgia Public Service Commission approved 80 MW of BESS for the Integrated Resource Plan — the three-year long-term plan that Georgia Power must provide to the PSC. The remaining 15 MW from the approved 80 MW is currently being developed near U.S. Army Base Fort Stewart, in Southeast Georgia.
Georgia Power proposed another 830 MW of BESS, and received approval during the 2022 IRP. In that same IRP, Georgia Power also received approval from the PSC to develop, own, and operate 1,400 MW of combustion turbine resources at the coal power plant, Plant Yates, a carbon polluting plant that adds to planet warming.
Of the 830 MW of BESS, 265 MW will be at McGrau Ford substation in Cherokee County, with 560 MW still available and being determined for deployment. That puts Georgia Power on track to own and operate a total of 915 MW of BESS for Georgia over the next several years.
Fitzgerald said she could see Georgia being in the top 5 states with battery capacity.
“With the data center growth and adding more and more solar, we need to put in more batteries,” she said.
This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.
Correction
A caption in an earlier version of this story incorrectly read:
Tim Echols, Public Service Commissioner and CEO/President of Georgia Power, shakes hands with Kim Greene at the opening of the Mossy Branch Energy Facility in Talbot County.
Echols is not employed by Georgia Power. Greene is CEO and president of Georgia Power.
Secondary Content
Author
Bottom Content
