Google is preparing to unveil a new “resilience hub” model, which will deploy battery storage for critical grid services.
The hyperscaler highlighted the forthcoming effort in a Virginia Commission on Electric Utility Regulation meeting on Monday covering data center load flexibility, demand response, and energy innovation. Kaitlin Savage, the PJM lead on Google’s energy markets and innovation team, explained that the company is working on this new model with a nonprofit partner, which it plans to announce later this year.
“These resilient hubs are intended as community-serving facilities,” said Savage. “They’re equipped with battery storage, and also other resources to provide critical services during emergencies, like power outages and extreme weather.”
The idea is that the hubs will pull double-duty. Year-round, they’re designed to offer essential services, including participation in virtual power plants. During and after disasters, however, they would provide back-up power “to keep essential services up and running,” Savage added.
This appears to be a version — and potentially a more widespread embrace — of a model deployed by the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute, which is employing solar and storage at two energy resilience hubs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. These will be located at affordable, multi-tenant housing complexes, which together have more than 500 residents. Google announced in January a $1 million contribution to support the organization’s work.
Google did not say who the nonprofit partner for this new model is; it also remains unclear where these hubs will be located. The company did not respond to a request for more details.
This is just the latest example of using behind-the-meter storage for resilience purposes, a concept that has recently gathered momentum. There is growing interest in using batteries in contexts where the industry has historically relied upon gas-powered generators, but doing so comes with challenges; for instance, certain types of lithium-ion batteries can be prone to thermal runaway.
However, a growing number of companies are looking to meet the resilience market. For instance, Viridi, a battery-maker based in Buffalo, New York, recently expanded into a factory space in California, and is building out armor-like technology to insulate its lithium-ion battery from fire risk. The company is initially targeting occupied commercial and industrial buildings where safety is paramount, but told Latitude Media in April that it is also in talks with the state of California about designing a product explicitly as backup power in a more residential context.
