Business

AEP among winners of AEIC award, for Byllesby Battery project

Tags
AEP among winners of AEIC award, for Byllesby Battery project

American Electric Power Co. (AEP) is one of five winners of the AEIC Achievement Award for 2019, presented by the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, for its Byllesby Battery project.

The AEIC Achievement Awards are presented annually to individuals or groups of individuals from AEIC member companies or committees who have clearly provided significant contributions to advancing the operations of the electric energy industry.

AEP, Florida Power & Light Co. (FP&L), Hawaiian Electric Co., PPL Electric Utilities (PPL EU), and the AEIC Power Delivery Storm Team received the awards during AEIC’s Annual Meeting.

AEP won the award for its Byllesby Battery project, a first-of-a-kind project where a hydroelectric generating facility is paired with a battery storage system to provide grid support, in this case, frequency regulation. The PJM frequency regulation market includes two types of frequency regulation signals: RegA (slow regulation), and RegD (fast regulation). Combining a conventional generator with a battery and innovative dispatch logic to provide frequency regulation enables the station to provide RegA or RegD service, creating an additional revenue stream for AEP and enhancing an asset that has been in service for more than 100 years.

The Byllesby hydroelectric plant, on the New River in southwest Virginia, was inducted into the Hydro Hall of Fame for 2018. This award was presented at HydroVision International, and a new class will be inducted into the Hall of Fame at HYDROVISION International 2020. Click here to submit a nomination.

FP&L received the award for its Intelligent Feeder Assessment Process, which allows the utility to predict outages and perform predictive maintenance before outages occur on overhead distribution systems.

Hawaiian Electric has partnered with the U.S. Army to construct its Schofield Generating Station on the island of Oahu. This firm power plant is located inland and at elevation, making it immune to storm surge and tsunami, and is fuel-flexible, capable of biodiesel fueling.

PPL EU has developed a Downed Conductor Safety process, to detect high impedance faults caused by downed power lines based on analysis of harmonic currents, and to automatically trip relays to disconnect power from that line.

After Super Storm Sandy, the AEIC Power Delivery Committee established its Storm Team with a mission to document and share best practices and facilitate the mutual aid process when responding to emergency situations. Fifteen Best Practices have been developed and have become industry standards.

AEIC was founded by Thomas Edison and his associates in 1885 and encourages research and enables the exchange of technical information and best practices through a committee structure, staffed with experts from management of member companies, to solve challenges and create opportunities for electric utilities worldwide.