147th meeting of The Lyncean Group of San Diego will be held on Wednesday, 7 May 2025
Location: Southwestern Yacht Club
2702 Qualtrough Street, San Diego, CA 92106 (Point Loma)
Speaker: Laurence N. Abcede, P.E.
Manager of Distribution Technology and Asset Strategy, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E)
Topic: Grid Scale Energy Storage Use Cases for Reliability and Resiliency
Speaker bio: Mr. Abcede is the Manager of Distribution Technology and Asset Strategy, and he has been managing distributed energy resources and microgrid deployments for SDG&E for the last 8-years. He is responsible for the engineering, design, commissioning, and operations of energy storage systems and temporary and permanent microgrids that support grid reliability and resiliency. In his 24-years in the electric industry, he has held technical and leadership positions in various areas of power system design, construction, and operations. He is a graduate of Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and an emphasis in Power Systems and Controls. Laurence is also a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of California.
Background: SDG&E has been rapidly expanding its battery energy storage and microgrid portfolio and currently has about 21 BESS and microgrid sites with 335 megawatts (MW) of utility-owned energy storage and another 49+ MW in development.
Battery and microgrid projects are complex systems comprised of batteries, inverters or power conversion systems (PCS), transformers, cyber secure communications, metering, switching, energy and battery management systems, microgrid controllers (if applicable) and auxiliary equipment. Typically, batteries are installed in custom-built, above-ground enclosures, with a fire suppression and warning system to maximize safety. SDG&E’s battery systems and microgrids typically are installed on SDG&E-owned property adjacent to existing substation facilities or in critical locations where grid reliability, stability and resiliency is needed most.
Microgrids are small-scale electric grids that can operate independent of or parallel to the larger regional grid and can keep critical community facilities powered during outages. Battery storage is an important part of every microgrid.
Battery storage works by absorbing electricity when it’s abundant on the power grid and sending excess power back to the grid when it’s most needed, such as during the evening after the sun sets and solar generators are unavailable.
You’ll find more information on this subject on SDG&E’s BESS and Microgrid website: https://www.sdge.com/major-projects/battery-energy-storage-systems-bess-and-microgrids
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