Navy Yard BESS
The Philadelphia Navy Yard is a 1200-acre campus of thriving businesses, and one of the largest private microgrids in the United States. The Navy Yard BESS project is a 6.4MW, 14.8MWh battery energy storage project that serves multiple important roles in the roughly 52MW Navy Yard microgrid, and Newtility was responsible for designing and commissioning it’s control systems.
Project Highlights
- Control Systems Engineering
- Complex BESS Dispatch Control
- Integration with 3 upstream SCADA platforms
- Testing & commissioning
The Challenge
Notable challenges for this project included the variety of use cases, the distributed nature of the Navy Yard’s system, and the number of parties involved in operations. We were tasked with designing a control system that serves multiple purposes at various times, from local/manual controls to remote operations from multiple locations. The system needed to be reliable, safe, and flexible.
These various use cases required automated operation of the project from several separate external systems, each of which Newtility led the development and implementation of an integration plan. Each stakeholder needed to be carefully coordinated not only in terms of accomplishing their individual needs, but in a way that was congruent with the other involved parties. This was a delicate balancing act, and Newtility’s ability to work with our clients, dissect the challenge into smaller pieces, and recommend clever solutions to problems became a key to success.
Our Solution
Utilizing some out-of-the-box thinking and our ever-flexible Newtility BOS Controller platform, Newtility was able to develop a solution that met all of the project’s various needs.
We were able to work with our client (and our client’s clients) to lead the project team through designing a reliable, flexible automation system, even as the scope of integration grew. Our responsibilities included:
- Control system concept and algorithm development
- BOS control panel design and programming
- HMI application development
- RTU programming
- Web-based Dashboard development
- Integration with the NEC AEROS battery management system
- Integration with three separate “upstream” SCADA platforms
- Meter programming & integration
- Design & implementation of improvements to BESS container life safety and off-gas detection systems
- On-site startup & commissioning
We are proud of how this project turned out, and Newtility continues to be involved in this project and the Navy Yard with ongoing operations and project support!