An 800-MW, four-hour battery is “not a realistic option” for replacing Talen Energy’s 1,280-MW, coal-fired Brandon Shores power plant near Baltimore, according to the PJM Interconnection.
The Sierra Club’s proposed battery storage solution to fill in for the retiring power plant fails to address all reliability problems with the planned shutdown and probably couldn’t be built in time, PJM said Friday in a letter to Paul Pinsky, director of the Maryland Energy Administration.
“While a large battery could reduce the severity of the reliability concerns in the [Baltimore Gas & Electric] system following the eventual retirement of the Brandon Shores and Wagner units, the battery concept would not replace the need for [a reliability must-run] agreement or address the system reliability needs in the near and longer term,” PJM said.
The issue centers on Talen’s plan to retire the Brandon Shores power plant by June 1, 2025. PJM last year found that shuttering the power plant would cause major reliability problems that can most effectively be solved by building new transmission lines that would help maintain grid voltage and prevent thermal overloads.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in November approved a roughly $796 million package of transmission projects to address the plant’s retirement. PJM, however, doesn’t expect the projects to be completed until the end of 2028.
The grid operator has entered into an RMR contract with Talen to keep Brandon Shores, along with two units totaling about 700 MW at its Wagner power plant near Baltimore, operating until the transmission projects are online. The contract includes a fixed charge of about $18 million a month, or $216 million a year, plus cost recovery for fuel and other costs, according to the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel and the Maryland Public Service Commission, which have asked FERC to extend the comment period on the proposal to June 3 from May 9.
Earlier this year, Telos Energy and GridLab, backed by the Sierra Club, found that a 600-MW, four-hour battery, plus some transmission line reconductoring and voltage support projects, would be a less expensive option for reliably replacing the Brandon Shores power plant compared to an RMR contract.
The plan, including an 800-MW battery option, has several critical flaws, according to PJM’s analysis released Friday.
It is “highly unlikely” a battery system could be built by June 1, 2025, when Talen plans to shutter its generating units, PJM said. Also, it would cost about $1 billion to build a 600-MW, four-hour battery system, more than the planned transmission upgrades, and the proposed battery storage wouldn’t fully address the area’s reliability problems following Brandon Shores’ shutdown, according to the grid operator.
“While a large battery could reduce the severity of the reliability concerns in the BGE system following the eventual retirement of the Brandon Shores and Wagner units, the battery concept would not replace the need for an RMR agreement or address the system reliability needs in the near and longer term,” PJM said in the letter to the Maryland Energy Administration. “PJM’s analysis ultimately concludes that to maintain reliability in Maryland, the Brandon Shores units cannot be retired until new transmission reinforcements are in place.”
Based on an initial review, it appears that PJM didn’t analyze the entire alternative solution that Sierra Club proposed, which included targeted and quick-to-build transmission system and voltage support components, according to Justin Vickers, a senior attorney in the group’s Environmental Law Program.
“Instead, PJM tested a partial solution using assumptions that are significantly more challenging than what PJM used in its analysis of Brandon Shores,” Vickers said in an email. “This raises concerns about whether keeping the Brandon Shores coal plant online would be enough to support the grid under those new assumptions that were only applied to Sierra Club’s proposal.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated to include comments from the Sierra Club.
