Duke Energy, Indiana State Partner With Research Institute For Energy Storage

Duke Energy and the state of Indiana’s Office of Utility Consumer Counselor (OUCC) are working together with Indiana’s Battery Innovation Centre (BIC) to advance clean energy technology in the state. In all, $1 million will be made in investment towards wind and solar energy research and development.

This money is part of the settlement required of Duke Energy for cost overruns and ethics violation during development of its Edwardsport IGCC coal facility.

5 microgrids will be built by BIC containing all the hardware and software needed for offsite generation, storage and management of wind and solar power.

President of BIC David Roberts chose lithium batteries for storage technology as it gives the microgrid system a longer shelf life. This could work for residential storage as well but at a smaller scale.

Anthony Swinger, from the utility consumer counselor’s office, said the collaborative effort to promote clean energy will benefit all Indiana consumers of electricity.

Testing will begin in fall 2015.

If you want to know more about this and other topics directly from end users of energy storage technologies join us at one of these annual events: The Energy Storage World Forum (Grid Scale Applications), or The Residential Energy Storage Forum, or one of our Training Courses.