Blymyer’s Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) expertise benefits Victory Pass and Arica solar projects

Blymyer Engineers has completed engineering on a BESS for a utility-scale solar project (also designed by Blymyer Engineers) called Victory Pass in Desert Center, California. Working with the developer Clearway and EPC SOLV Energy, Blymyer provided structural and electrical engineering.

Victory Pass and a sister project, Arica, will add up to 465 megawatts of clean energy-generating capacity and 1000 MWh of battery storage, according to the Department of the Interior press release.

Large BESS projects store energy from a variety of sources and discharge it as needed. Due to their capacity to quickly absorb, hold, and then reinject electricity to the grid, BESS projects are making renewable energy generation and use viable for widespread use across our national grid. Utility-scale customers can use battery storage for reserve capacity, frequency regulation, and voltage control to the grid.

Summarized by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), “For system operators, battery storage systems can provide grid services such as frequency response, regulation reserves and ramp rate control. It can also defer investments in peak generation and grid reinforcements. Utility-scale battery storage systems can enable greater penetration of variable renewable energy into the grid by storing the excess generation and by firming the renewable energy output.” In addition to providing engineering services for the BESS, Blymyer was also responsible for the single substation design for both projects.

“The size of Victory Pass represents our growth and leading position on industrial-scale battery energy storage system projects,” said Director of Engineering Greg Mazur. “As the renewable energy industry expands, these systems and their substations will play a more important and larger role.”

Blymyer President Mike Rantz added, “We are excited to be at the leading edge of renewable energy projects of this size; these types of projects are going to make a significant difference in moving the country away from ozone-depleting energy sources.”