Lightshift Energy announced today that it is developing what’s expected to become the largest battery energy storage project in Vermont.
The energy storage company is developing a 16-megawatt and 52-megawatt-hour system for a semiconductor manufacturing facility owned by GlobalFoundries. The system will cover up to 40% of the facility’s load, and it will be used for peak shaving: storing electricity when demand and costs are low, and discharging when demand peaks.
Michael Herbert, Lightshift’s managing partner and co-founder, told Latitude Media that the project is a testament to the major uptick in interest in energy storage systems he’s been observing for the last couple of years, driven by load growth, transmission and interconnection constraints, and the increasing maturity of the technology.
“We’re at a real inflection point where a lot of utilities are long on energy but short on capacity, and that’s only getting exacerbated by load growth,” he said. “In situations like this, all you need is capacity, and what storage offers is a viable capacity resource.”
Pairing large loads like manufacturing facilities and data centers with utility-scale storage can be beneficial both for the load and the grid. For GlobalFoundries, being able to rely on an extra supply of electricity when demand is high reduces its cost exposure; costs come to almost $25 per kilowatt-month — including transmission charges, capacity charges, and local network service — and are only expected to grow, according to Herbert.
And at a macro level, storage can reduce stress on the transmission system at times of peak load.
“It’s becoming an increasingly critical component of the transition to clean energy, load growth, and AI deployment, and helping solve transmission, capacity and interconnection constraints on the power system,” Herbert said.
The process so far
GlobalFoundries selected Lightshift as its energy storage provider through an RFP process, and the two companies worked together on the project for about 12 months, refining the location, use case, and size that would allow the manufacturer to get the most out of it.
Once it’s built, the system, which is behind the meter, will connect directly to the manufacturing facility’s distribution system.
Because semiconductor manufacturers like GlobalFoundries use precision tools that are highly sensitive to fluctuations in voltage and frequency, the process with Lightshift entailed a series of detailed engineering studies to ensure that the quality of the energy storage’s electricity was on par with the grid’s. They included a power quality analysis to check if the battery could mitigate voltage fluctuations in GlobalFoundries’ system, a harmonic study to make sure there were no disturbances caused by the system’s inverters, and a power flow study simulating potential real-world events like potential faults on the grid.
“Many large industrial facilities are very sensitive to lost manufacturing, so the opportunity cost can be quite high, even if you have instantaneous flickers in voltage,” Herbert explained. “Making sure that the battery storage system and the GlobalFoundries’ distribution network could operate together symbiotically was the biggest challenge.”
The additional studies added some extra time to the development process, and they would have not been necessary if the system had a high-voltage grid connection.
But, Herbert added, “the various studies that we did have been a huge validation for the technology in its ability to operate effectively and behind the meter at these large industrial facilities where you have these sensitivities.”
And the fact that Lightshift’s battery connects to GlobalFoundries’ distribution network rather than the grid allows the company to skip the ISO high-voltage interconnection queue and bring it online faster. That’s a big advantage in an industry where long interconnection queues are becoming a major obstacle to new generation projects coming online; the average renewable energy project that came online in 2023 had languished for five years in the grid interconnection queue, 80% of which is made of solar and storage.
Instead, Lightshift is set on starting construction this summer, and on having the project operational sometime during the first quarter of 2026, depending on equipment lead times.
