Presidio gets battery

Presidio is taking the need for a backup battery to new levels.

A four-megawatt sodium-sulfur battery system that is as large as a warehouse was put into the Energy Reliability Council of Texas power grid in March and is now undergoing tests to allow it to automatically address power outages in Presidio and nearby areas along the Texas-Mexico border.

The $25 million battery, nicknamed the "Big Old Battery," was needed because Presidio, located in the remote Big Bend area, is served by only one transmission line, which comes from Marfa, said Larry Jones, spokesman for Electric Transmission Texas, which builds and operates transmission facilities in the state. Though the city has backup power through an agreement with Mexico, utilities there operate on a different frequency, which means power has to shut down before frequencies can be synchronized in order to allow power to be shipped into Presidio from Mexico.

"It’s part of an overall transmission improvement project," Jones said.

The battery can serve as a backup for between six and eight hours during power outages, said Brad Newton, Fort Stockton city administrator.

"Because of where we live, you have one of the coolest places in the state, Marfa, and one of the hottest places in the state, Presidio," Newton said. "You get a lot of thunderstorms where the hot air meets the cold air."

That means the power goes out often, he said.

Electric Transmission Texas is using the less expensive of two options it had to deal with the power outages, Jones said. A $45 million replacement of the 60-mile transmission that was built in 1948 line is planned. Jones expects construction to start by the end of the year.

But in order to make sure power remains constant, Jones said the company had to either build a second transmission line or the battery. The battery turned out to be the more financially sound option, since a second power line would have at least doubled the project’s cost.

"This has been a long-term challenge for the city — several years," Jones said. "We tried to come up with a solution that was both affordable and addresses the problems for a very, very remote area."

The battery is made up of 80 modules that were manufactured in Japan, shipped to California and then brought to Texas on 24 trucks. It is the first sodium sulfur battery in Texas and the largest in the United States.

Currently, the battery, which is paid for by electric customers throughout the state, can be turned on manually from a dispatch center in Corpus Christi if a power outage is detected. Once the automated detection system is in place, Jones said it would make it more effective.

"It’s the difference between a couple of minutes and one-tenth of a second," he said of response time.

And while this project is meant purely to help with transmission, Jones said that in the future, information gained from it would be able to assist in areas like storage of wind power.

Newton said Presidio has seen a number of blackouts of up to five minutes in length as a result of the testing of the new system. But once the system is fully operational, he feels it will be worth it.

"We’ve had some problems with the older equipment dropping out on us, but, really, that’s the adage of you have to break a few eggs to get real mayonnaise," he said.