A big battery inside an apartment block: Buffalo project aims to prove it can be safe
An affordable housing complex in Buffalo, USA, has a 3.75-megawatt-hour lithium-ion storage system. Manufacturer Viridi relies on a fireproof enclosure designed to contain a cell fire.
Symbolic image · Photo: Yan lance / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (cropped and resized)
A 3.75-megawatt-hour lithium-ion battery storage system is operating at the Peace Bridge Place apartment complex in Buffalo, New York, the Associated Press reports. It can power the all-electric, geothermally heated affordable housing building for several days; according to manufacturer Viridi, it is among the largest battery systems in a US residential building. The system charges when power is plentiful and feeds energy back when the grid is strained – the utility pays for this, lowering the complex's electricity costs.
Viridi says it spent six years and ten million dollars on a fireproof enclosure. Plates, pouches and spacing isolate the individual cells so that a single failure does not spread. In a test in which the battery was forced to fail, cheesecloth laid over the container did not char. In April the company announced it met UL standards that allow indoor installation without additional fire suppression.
"The only thing that has been holding up installations at scale is safety," says Viridi CEO Jon M. Williams. Doreen Harris, head of the energy agency NYSERDA, which helped fund the project, sees it as important proof of the safety and viability of such systems. After large battery fires, some US communities have opposed storage projects.