By Owen Pfeiffer
BUFFALO — A Buffalo battery maker and a Western New York affordable-housing developer say they have put one of the largest indoor lithium-ion storage systems in any occupied U.S. apartment building into a 105-unit complex on the city’s West Side, a project backed by state energy dollars and designed to cut the building’s power bills.
Viridi and Good Carbon Co. announced the 3.75-megawatt-hour system at Peace Bridge Place on Oct. 20. The batteries are spread across seven battery rooms in the fully electric building, which also uses geothermal heating and cooling.
The announcement lands as storage is becoming a local zoning fight elsewhere in the region. Last week, the Dunkirk Common Council passed a six-month moratorium on battery storage applications, citing fire and thermal runaway risks, the OBSERVER reported.
The business case
The companies say the system will let the building draw less from the grid when power is most expensive and get paid to cut demand when the utility asks.
“Energy is one of the biggest operating costs in multifamily housing, and how you manage it directly affects the long-term performance of a property,” said Adam Serbert, Good Carbon’s chief executive. “That means lower operating costs, new revenue opportunities and a stronger economic foundation for keeping the property affordable and well maintained.”
Mr. Serbert said the company sees the building as a template. “For us, this is not just about one building — it is about creating a model we can apply across future multifamily projects,” he said.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority is supporting the project through its Future Grid Challenge, and the building is a National Grid pilot for flexible, grid-responsive technology, according to the companies. Viridi’s energy management software works with EnergyHub’s Edge distributed energy resource management system, so the building can respond to National Grid signals during peak demand.
“Peace Bridge Place demonstrates how forward-thinking energy storage solutions can ensure New York’s multifamily buildings are meeting the energy needs of its residents while creating a more reliable and resilient electric grid,” said Doreen M. Harris, NYSERDA’s president and chief executive. “Projects like this embody NYSERDA’s mission to spur innovation that drives New York toward a clean energy future.”
A Buffalo factory’s bet
For Viridi, the project is a showcase for its Buffalo plant. The company said the factory can currently produce about 400 megawatt-hours of battery systems a year and has room to expand.
“This project demonstrates what becomes possible when energy storage is designed to serve the building and the grid at the same time,” said Jon M. Williams, Viridi’s chief executive. “The bigger opportunity is proving that large-scale lithium-ion storage can be safely integrated into the places where people actually live and work.”
Indoor installations have been limited by the risk of thermal runaway, in which a failing cell overheats and spreads fire to neighboring cells. Viridi says its system uses a passive “anti-propagation” design. The company said that in UL 9540A testing, in which a cell is deliberately forced into thermal failure, the failure did not spread to other cells, and that the system has earned a UL 9540 listing from TÜV Rheinland. Those results come from the company’s announcement; the Buffalo Chronicle has not independently reviewed the test reports.
Dunkirk’s pause
About 45 miles southwest, Dunkirk lawmakers are moving in the other direction, at least for now. The council’s local law followed Mayor Kate Wdowiasz’s veto of an earlier moratorium resolution, the OBSERVER reported. The council plans a Nov. 18 meeting on possible battery storage zoning rules.
“This moratorium, it’s a pause to follow the state’s own advice and enact the New York State BESS model law and safety guidance,” said First Ward Councilwoman Natalie Luczkowiak, the law’s sponsor. “We don’t want to experiment while we write safety standards.”
The law states that locating storage facilities near “schools, daycares, parks, hospitals, and major roadways creates unacceptable evacuation, first-responder, and community risk.” Councilman Frank Torain noted the city had begun updating its zoning before the latest application, for a site behind the former UPS warehouse on Brigham Road, and said a company whose separate project was approved had “thoroughly answered concerns.”
The two cases are not the same kind of project: Dunkirk’s debate centers on proposed storage facilities on their own parcels, while the Buffalo system serves a single building. But both turn on the same question state officials have been trying to answer with model codes and safety guidance: where, and under what rules, large lithium-ion batteries belong.
The Buffalo Chronicle has asked NYSERDA and Viridi for details on the state’s funding for the project and the building’s expected savings.
Leave a Reply