Saint John Energy is embarking on a second battery energy storage project with Tesla Megapacks, this time at a new wind farm project near the city of Saint John.
The Megapacks will be installed at the Burchill Wind Farm, located about 15km southwest of Saint John. The project was officially commissioned in June 2023 and features 10 turbines providing 42 megawatts (MW) of power, enough to supply 15% of the city’s energy needs. To help store some of that energy and deploy it during peak periods and times of low energy generation from the turbines, the company will be installing a 6MW/12MWh battery storage site using Tesla Megapacks.
The Megapacks will be able to power 3,100 homes in the area for two hours, and more importantly will prevent Saint John Energy from having to use electricity generated from coal-fired plants to meet the demand.
“The energy storage is important to Burchill when renewable sources like wind are not always readily available. The Megapacks allow us to be able to store the energy when the renewables are plentiful and use them when they’re not. When the energy demand is high, we can dispatch that energy on our grid,” said Glen Fillmore, the executive director of strategic growth at Saint John Energy.
According to Saint John Energy, the Megapack project will be funded from a $50 million federal grant for the Burchill Wind Project. The Megapacks are scheduled to arrive later this year and expected to be installed at the Somerset substation in early 2024.
Saint John Energy decided to add a battery storage site at Burchill partly due to the success the company has seen with their first Megapack project. Installed in 2020, the company was expecting to see large savings, and the Megapacks delivered just that, with Saint John Energy saving over $109,000 in the first year of operation. Those savings were generated by the Megapacks delivering almost 70 MW of power during peak periods.
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