Viridi and Good Carbon say 3.75-megawatt-hour battery can power Peace Bridge Place for several days

Forced-failure test supports indoor use without added suppression

Manufacturer Viridi and developer Good Carbon Co. said Tuesday that the 3.75-megawatt-hour lithium-ion system, which can power Peace Bridge Place for several days, is among the largest battery systems in a U.S. residential building. Manufacturer Viridi and state officials hope the project will show that larger batteries can safely operate where people live and work.

The battery at Peace Bridge Place stores excess electricity when power is plentiful and draws on that energy when the grid is strained and electricity is costly. When demand is high, the complex will use it, draw less power from the grid and send electricity back if needed. The utility will pay the complex for not drawing from the grid and for sending power back, and the arrangement helps lower the complex’s overall electricity costs for residents. The building can also use the system during outages.

“We want our electric power to be resilient, affordable and available. Distributed battery storage accomplishes all three,” Viridi CEO Jon M. Williams said. “The only thing that has been holding up installations at scale is safety; a lot of the products on the market over the last 10 years have burned things down.”

To ensure nothing would catch fire when used inside a residence, Viridi’s system had to pass a test in which the battery was forced to fail while cheesecloth covered the container. The cheesecloth did not char or ignite, according to the test report record. In April, Viridi announced it had met stringent Underwriters Laboratories safety standards, so its system could be installed indoors without adding additional fire suppression to a building.

Viridi spent six years and $10 million figuring out how to make a fireproof container for batteries. Half the cost was for batteries Viridi destroyed during testing. Williams said the company uses plates, pouches and spacing to isolate each battery cell. “If one fails, the energy dissipates instead of spreading to the next battery, so that no gas, smoke, heat or fire escapes the container,” Williams said.

Jigar Shah, an expert in clean-energy financing and deployment, said the Peace Bridge Place system was a milestone in overcoming safety concerns. Shah, who led the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office during the Biden administration, said Viridi was the only company to consistently pass the test he described as “near impossible.”

Viridi and Good Carbon Co. chose the Peace Bridge apartments because the all-electric building uses geothermal heating and cooling rather than natural gas and needed additional, resilient power. Williams said local electricity demand can exceed the available supply, so National Grid supported the project. Good Carbon Co. said Peace Bridge Place qualifies as affordable housing because renters earn no more than 80% of the area’s median income. The developer said energy storage will be an important part of future multifamily housing projects.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority helped fund the project as part of its focus on including disadvantaged communities in the clean-energy transition. “It goes a long way toward demonstrating the safety and viability of these types of projects,” said NYSERDA President and CEO Doreen Harris. Harris said New York needs more options like the Peace Bridge Place system for maintaining a reliable grid and managing costs, a priority for Gov. Kathy Hochul. “If we don’t need to build generation, we can utilize the grid that we have more effectively, that’s extremely valuable to us,” she said.

Energy experts said deploying large batteries that can safely power apartment buildings is an important step toward replacing fossil fuels with renewables, but such systems remain uncommon because of cost and fire-risk concerns. Larger batteries are already paired with solar and wind projects, and homeowners use smaller batteries to store excess energy from rooftop solar and provide backup power.

As large battery fires have drawn attention, some communities have opposed further development. The Electric Power Research Institute said the failure rate for batteries has decreased as more are installed. Shah thinks far more U.S. homes will use batteries for backup power by 2030. He said the country could meet much more electricity demand and avoid costly grid upgrades if batteries were strategically deployed.

Batteries help maintain a steady flow of power when sources such as solar and wind are not producing. They charge when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, then supply energy when demand is high. Batteries can also store excess electricity from hydropower. New York is one of the top hydropower-producing states, and Buffalo is close to Niagara Falls, where most of the state’s hydropower is produced.

Viridi has manufactured in Buffalo since 2018 and has manufacturing facilities in Buffalo and Richmond, California, where a state grant assisted with renovations. A medical research building in Buffalo is also using the company’s battery system. Williams said Viridi’s plant could build enough battery packs in a year to supply energy for about 14,000 average U.S. homes for 24 hours.

California Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild said he was impressed with Viridi. More than two-thirds of California’s electricity comes from clean energy, and batteries get a lot of the credit, Hochschild said. As electricity demand grows, batteries help ensure the grid is reliable, reduce pollution and contain costs, he said. Hochschild, who co-founded the Electric Innovation Initiative to use electricity instead of fossil fuels more broadly throughout the U.S. economy, said, “I believe the battery industry is the single most important energy industry for the next several decades.”

In California, 2,000 battery storage systems are being added each week, and the largest in the world is under construction in Fresno County, Hochschild said. He thinks the battery industry is poised to take off. “We’re just getting started.”

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