The World's Largest Single-Phase Battery Is Now Up and Running

Meet Crimson Storage, the world's largest single-phase battery, which is now live in the California desert. Electrek reports: Crimson Storage is also the second-largest energy storage project currently in operation of any configuration. The 350 megawatt (MW)/1400 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery storage project, which sits on on 2,000 acres west of Blythe in Riverside County, broke ground in 2021. Canadian Solar oversaw construction and provided the battery energy storage systems, and Axium Infrastructure and solar and storage developer Recurrent Energy will be Crimson Storage's long-term owners.

Residential homes are usually served by a single-phase power supply, and this project, on average, is expected to store and dispatch enough electricity to power more than 47,000 homes each year. Crimson Storage holds two long-term contracts with local utilities: a 200 MW/800 MWh 14-year and 10-month contract with Southern California Edison, and a 150 MW/ 600MWh 15-year contract with Pacific Gas and Electric.

Re: Single Phase?

[Arethan]

It is not important. I cannot really say why they decided to express this limitation. All you need to build additional phases is more conductors and dc-to-ac converters - go turn a 3-phase generator if you want. The supply of power is mostly irrelevant in this case. Just reporters failing at life⦠still.

Re:

[omnichad]

A lot of homes are 3 phase. It's how you get 200 amps.

But the distribution power line that feeds the home is single phase. You get your home's phases from the taps on the step-down transformer at the pole.

Re:

[Szeraax]

They are now split phase, no?

Re:

[TechyImmigrant]

>They are now split phase, no?

Well that's the nonsense US naming for what at the house is two phases, 180 (or pi) degrees apart. Whatever machinations it went through to get to your house, there are two phases on two wire, relative to the local ground/neutral point.

3 phase typically is 3 phase because of how motors and dynamos work but when you take a DC source and split it into three AC phases, it doesn't get called "split-3-ways phase". It's still called 3-phase because of what it looks like at the end

Re:

[Sheldon_Cooper_1]

In the US this is called split-phase instead of dual-phase or 2-phase because early in the 20th century there was a 2-phase system with the phases 90 degrees apart. This is still in use in some areas.

Re:

[TechyImmigrant]

Yay. Choosing to use a silly name because those other people used a sensible name.

Re:

[tsqr]

two phases, 180 (or pi) degrees apart

pi != 180. Perhaps you meant "180 degrees (pi radians)"?

Re:

[TechyImmigrant]

I expected people for whom pi makes more sense to know the context.

But this is Slashdot. I should expect nit picking.

Re:

[thegarbz]

You can't get 3 phases (120degrees) from a single phase with a transformer as far as I'm aware. You need a rotary phase converter for that. You can get single phase or split phase (2 phases at 180degrees at half the voltage of the single phase output)

Re:

[TechyImmigrant]

>You need a rotary phase converter for that.

There are many ways to do it. ESCs in rc planes certainly don't use a rotating mass to make the three phase signal.

Re: Single Phase?

[guruevi]

Correct, but they donâ(TM)t pull 3000A either. The way they do it in small electronics is rectifying the signal, then manufacturing multiple phases based on requirements, you could manufacture pure sines but generally you donâ(TM)t need to since DC-DC is cheaper and associated losses are acceptable.

Re:

[TechyImmigrant]

I don't discriminate over current draw you ampist.

Re: Single Phase?

[PPH]

That doesn't matter. Nobody is moving 350 megawatts of power anywhere at household utilization voltages. It will be three phase at distribution (12 kV) or local transmission (115 kV) voltages. Local subtations and ultimately pole pigs will step it down.

Re:

[bodog]

> Nobody is moving 350 megawatts of power anywhere at household utilization voltages. It will be three phase at distribution (12 kV) or local transmission (115 kV) > voltages. Local subtations and ultimately pole pigs will step it down.

And possibly HVDC between the solar panels and the battery..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Re: Single Phase?

[Swervin]

Most homes are what is called "split phase", you take one phase from a 3-phase system, the transformer drops it to 240 volts, you center-tap the transformer and tie that to ground to make your neutral, and then the house gets each half of that phase on one leg. Leg to neutral gets you 120v, and leg to leg gets you the 240v. It's not really very common to call it "dual phase", even if its legs are technically 180 degrees out of phase of each other.

Re:

[Arethan]

I love making crass arguments and being shown I'm also a fucking twit on many occasion. Thank you for stepping up. :)

Re:

[Cool Hands Leia]

He actually stepped down to 120V, 60Hz. Sorry to invert the argument...

Re:

[Arethan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
lol

Re:

[ebh]

He should have been more direct.

Re:

[LeadGeek]

In sweltering south Texas, there are a lot of homes, especially in older neighborhoods that have true 3-phase power. You can spot the pair of unequally-sized transformers with 4 conductors coming out of them to the home. I think the configuration is called 'high leg delta' and provides 3-phase 240v power, and the larger transformer is center-tapped to provide 120v. The configuration can also provide single-phase 208v. Interestingly, the transformers need only be connected to 2 of the 3 phases to provide th

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

I cannot really say why they decided to express this limitation.

Probably because "biggest in the world" sounds better than "second biggest".

Re:

[cruff]

Maybe single phase of deployment? Almost certainly the interconnect to the grid would be three phase?

Re:

[lsllll]

I'm not an EE, but to my knowledge there's no such thing as a "Single Phase Battery". Batteries are DC (direct current). They supply a constant voltage difference between the two poles. Phase denotes AC (alternate current), where one wire sits at zero volts and the other follows a path across the zero axis. The path usually resembles a sine wave. In North America where we are at 60Hz AC signal, that voltage crosses the zero volt threshold 120 times, thus it completes 60 cycles of the sine wave from sta

Re:

[lsllll]

Correcting my post after more reading. Residential service is a single phase of 240V split into 2 via a center tap to "appear" as 2 phases. And they are offset by 180 degrees, not 90 degrees.

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

It's called split phase.
Yes, they're 180 degrees out of phase (due to the fact that it's just 2 sides of a center-tapped transformer).
They don't just "appear" as 2 phases, they are 2 phases- derived from 1 phase, as you noted.

Some residential service (MDU, usually) is 3-phase (208v instead of 220v). My condo has this.

Re: Single Phase?

[guruevi]

In many places they are offset by 120 degrees, not 180. The total power remains the same, but the voltage measured between phases is only 205V.

Re:

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

It's baffling to me. Homes are indeed single phase, but nearly all neighborhood distribution systems are 3-phase.

Re:

[NicknameUnavailable]

What does that even mean and why is it important?

It means how they built it and has nothing to do with any physical effect whatsoever. Needs more time crystals.

battery purpose

[antus]

Great! I often wonder why they say "47,000 homes for a year" when thats not really relevant. Big batteries work well in a mix with renewables where different types of generation happen at different times. They firm up the grip filling the dips and troughs, so how many houses they can power for a year is irrelevant. What they do is power a lot more than the quoted number, for short periods. I guess most people struggle to understand this, but I think its important to know, to fight the detractors who will say the battery is tiny on grid generation scale. It certainly has its place.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

At maximum output this battery can provide 350MW for 4 hours. It probably provides some short term smoothing too, but it very much looks like they are planning to shift some daytime generation to match evening demand.

Re:

[avandesande]

While renewables are part of the picture it lets the power company avoid capital projects to increase capacity to cover peak loads. This would typically entail building a new power plant.

Single phase as in...

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Constructed all at once as opposed to constructed in phase.

Other photos on the web clearly show 3-phase power lines leaving the plant.

2000 acres???

[umopapisdn69]

"350 megawatt (MW)/1400 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery storage project, which sits on on 2,000 acres"

Other than making it sound stupidly big (2000 acres is 3 square miles), what does that number mean?. The pictures in the videos look a lot nearer to maybe 20 acres.

If that plant "sits on" 2000 acres, what are they doing with the other 90% of that land?

Re:2000 acres???

[ShanghaiBill]

If that plant "sits on" 2000 acres, what are they doing with the other 90% of that land?

According to TFA, they plan to add solar in the future.

where's the nerd talk ?!

[cats-paw]

WTF is going on.

Huge battery field and they

1 refer to phase in an ambiguous way. there is 2-phase, as in house power but there are also batteries that use phase change in materials, which is it ?
2 why does it matter that it's a "single phase" battery farm ?? see #1
3 WHAT KIND OF FREAKING BATTERIES ARE THEY ?

Terrible article. What I want to know is who is using batteries which are NOT Li-Ion. There's been some really promising technologies in battery technology specifically for this application where weight/energy density is not critical

Re:

[Gravis Zero]

I agree with your analysis.

1) Another poster wrote, "Most homes are what is called "split phase", you take one phase from a 3-phase system, the transformer drops it to 240 volts, you center-tap the transformer and tie that to ground to make your neutral, and then the house gets each half of that phase on one leg. Leg to neutral gets you 120v, and leg to leg gets you the 240v." What this means is you are actually only really getting single phase power in residential areas.

2) It's a technical limitation whic

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Their website says they are lithium ion batteries.

In Japan there are some sodium sulphur grid scale batteries that have been around for quite a while now. I think the main issue is that while some other technology is promising and has some advantages, the shear amount of money being thrown at increasing lithium ion battery production is driving down the cost much faster than anything else.

Re:

[srmalloy]

At least, from the picture in TFA, it's got nothing around it that needs to be worried about when the battery farm catches fire.

hydro pumped storage.

[danda]

I bet the storage capacity is much much smaller than a hydro pumped storage facility such as the san luis reservoir, oroville, etc.

Here are some numbers [reddit.com].

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

San Luis is already used for pumped storage hydroelectric.

Gianelli Power Plant [wikipedia.org]

But more storage is needed, and there are few good sites for more pumped storage.

Re:

[Gravis Zero]

Hydro pumped storage only works in very specific site which all require a 10 year environmental impact study which they may fail. Ultimately, it will not be able to store all the power we need even if we use all suitable sites.

We should use ALL the energy storage methods we can as there is no sense in putting all your eggs in one basket.

Re:

[srmalloy]

The proposed pumped-storage facility for the San Vincente Reservoir in San Diego will be 4000MWh (described in SDCWA's documents as "4000MWh per day", as if you could keep pumping more water into the "smaller upper reservoir" forever), to produce 500MW for eight hours when fully 'charged'. Assuming that it makes it through all of the regulatory hurdles, it's expected to take a decade or more to go live.

Batteries don't have phases

[couchslug]

Shit article a technically competent editor would never have posted absent apathy, malice or both.

We see what you do.

Re: Batteries don't have phases

[dasblimpvonartyka]

acordc? most are dc i thought...

What about ARES?

[SciCom Luke]

Makes me wonder about ARES? https://aresnorthamerica.com/ [aresnorthamerica.com]
They were supposed to build a battery of potential energy.
They have a website with fancy animations, claiming that they are already working on a battery that can keep the Las Vegas strip running for half an hour.
But I have never heard of this project becoming operational...

Re: What about ARES?

[zmollusc]

Last I heard, there was an assassination and they were cloning the leader from his nose.

Re:

[SciCom Luke]

Whaaaaat?

It's all in the wording

[dhaen]

Batteries don't have phases as they're DC ; construction does have phases.

No one in their right mind would distribute AC in anything but 3 phase because of losses.

Re:

[myrdos2]

Gee whiz, what a policy! But I figure that if I only reply to your posts I'll be OK.

One-upped

[Tablizer]

Country #2: We made one with two phases!

Country #3: Oh yah? We got three!

Country #4: We leapfrogged you all, we got 20!

Country #5: Uh, why are more phases better?

Country #2,3,4: "sshhh, it sells."

Re:

[Teun]

In the metaverse it will be 3D.

Why three phase, etc.

[newslash.formatblows]

Besides the "batteries don't have phases" part, this is a really good explanation why we use three-phase power distribution in the US. https://www.allaboutcircuits.c... [allaboutcircuits.com]