Northern Reliability helps switch State House from gas to battery backup

January 23, 2021  |  By Emmett Gartner

Vermont State House. Courtesy photo.

When he was approached by Green Mountain Power in 2019 about installing one of his company’s renowned battery systems in the basement of the Vermont State House, Jay Bellows was intrigued.

For one, the chief executive officer of the Waterbury-based energy storage company Northern Reliability said he knew there would be constraints with the room’s limited space and environment. 

The basement previously was home to a decades-old backup diesel generator. To replace it with a similar, more modern diesel system alone would have required installing the new unit outside of the building and that would have meant blasting away a ledge near the cafeteria to provide necessary space.

Yet integrating a battery system that met the State House’s energy needs posed its own similar difficulties, too.

After visiting the site with officials from GMP and the state's Department of Building and General Services, however, Bellows and his team at Northern Reliability recognized the project’s feasibility and began designing a system that met the challenges. 

Working in collaboration with Dynapower of South Burlington which provided the inverter for the system, the project successfully produced the 250 kilowatt-hour battery that went online last fall and was announced earlier this month, making it the first of its kind to back up a state capitol. 

Dynapower CEO Adam Knudsen praised the collective effort of the Vermont firms on the project. “Energy storage presents an incredible opportunity for Vermont to leverage its in-state technical talent to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and grow jobs here in Vermont — a  win-win for state,” he said. 

Bellows saw the local roots of this project as no coincidence.

“As a whole, Vermont has a green mentality, but one of the things that a lot of people don’t realize is that Vermont is incredibly sound when it comes to technology. There’s a lot of innovation happening all over Vermont that most people don’t realize is even here,” Bellows said.

Indeed, Northern Reliability has a relatively low profile in Waterbury where it occupies former Keurig Green Mountain commercial and industrial space on Demeritt Place and in nearby Pilgrim Park. In business for more than 40 years, the company branched out from Northern Power Systems and eventually moved to Waterbury from Waitsfield several years ago where its growing workforce designs and builds battery storage systems that it then installs at sites across the U.S. and around the world. Bellows said the company has systems on every continent – including Antarctica.   

So it was nice to have a project practically in the backyard when the State House request came about, he said.

The project was made possible by $450,000 allocated by the state Legislature in 2019 and a GMP program that pays customers to share with the utility excess energy that they generate – in this instance the battery system’s stored electricity, explained Daniel Edson in the state’s Buildings and General Services energy office.

GMP spokeswoman Kristin Kelly said the power company’s program helps make the economics work to promote renewable energy investment. “That’s our role there,” she said, “to help the state reduce costs and carbon emissions, which helps taxpayers and GMP customers.”

One final piece of the puzzle is provided by Virtual Peaker software installed to allow the battery system to communicate with the GMP network. The cloud-based technology  is helping GMP connect more clean-energy storage systems into its network. 

The State House will utilize the system’s stored electricity during power outages and times of peak energy demand on the New England grid. By reducing the burden on the region’s grid and lowering peak rates, GMP projects the system will save Vermont taxpayers $44,000 and GMP customers $18,000 over 10 years. 

In the video news conference announcing the project, Gov. Phil Scott touted the financial savings. “I know many think clean energy must be  more expensive, but the work done today shows not only can we reduce carbon emissions, but if we are  strategic, we can also save money in the process,”  he said.

The new battery storage units built by Northern Reliability sit beneath the Vermont State House as a ready source of backup power during an outage or a time of peak demand. Courtesy photo.

Having the battery backup to turn to especially when there’s high demand systemwide – such as summertime peak demand for cooling – will help reduce the need for power companies to turn to the typical dirtier energy sources to meet the need at those times. The shift will cut the carbon equivalent of 326 gallons of gasoline per year for the State House system, project officials said. And parting with the old diesel system also contributes to carbon reduction goals.

“At the end of the day, we were going to spend the money on a fossil fuel system anyways, so we were able to utilize that same appropriation amount to purchase the battery system,” Edson reflected on how the initial plan to buy a new conventional generator evolved to the battery project. “Now we aren’t burning propane every time we lose power, or having to test the generator every few months to make sure it’s working.”

State Curator David Schutz pointed out that it’s apropos that the energy source at the State House evolve with the times: “The building itself dates to the mid-19th century, when its chandeliers were 

illuminated with coal-fired gas. Electricity was finally installed in 1898, and now, over 120 years later,  there is an unprecedented reliance on power and technology to do the people’s business.” 

After this project, Bellows and Edson said they both feel optimistic about future collaborations on renewable energy solutions in state-owned buildings. 

“We talked about looking at a lot of their facilities to do the same thing,” Bellows said.

“[BGS] will continue to look at this option in every facility, especially as our older generators meet their end of life and it’s time to replace them” Edson added.

The significance of the system’s overall success, and its revolutionary nature, isn’t lost by either party.

“I hope that [the battery system project] puts the word out there that this is something that we’ve been doing for a long time, in terms of leading by example, and we will continue to look at different unique opportunities to green our buildings and to reduce costs for taxpayers,” Edson said.