Google partners with SRP to accelerate long-duration energy storage development

Google is joining forces with one of the Valley’s major utilities to explore ways to accelerate development of long-duration energy storage, or LDES, technologies.

Under a collaboration announced today, Google and nonprofit water and power provider Salt River Project will begin studying how emerging non-lithium ion technologies perform in the real world to move more quickly toward full-scale deployment.

Google will be funding a portion of LDES pilot projects for SRP’s grid, evaluating data on how those projects perform and providing input for research and testing, according to the two entities. Details on potential projects have not been released.

SRP has already issued requests for proposals in 2022 and in 2024 for LDES projects. Google and SRP will together consider whether any of those projects will be part of the research collaboration.

The collaboration could advance both Google’s and SRP’s sustainability goals. SRP has pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

“We believe that long duration energy storage will play an essential role in meeting SRP’s sustainability goals and ensuring grid reliability,” said Chico Hunter, SRP Manager of Innovation and Development, in a statement. “This first of its kind research collaboration with Google will bring additional insight into the viability of these new technologies that could move them to maturity more quickly.”

For its part, Google says it aims to run its data centers and offices fully on carbon free energy and to reach net-zero emissions across its operations.

“Long duration energy storage is a key technology in the portfolio of advanced energy solutions that we want to bring to market faster — to unlock stronger, cleaner, more resilient grids,” said Lucia Tian, Head of Advanced Energy Technologies at Google, in a statement. “Through our collaboration with SRP, we aim to accelerate the innovation and technological advancements necessary to deploy LDES solutions at scale so communities in Arizona and beyond can meet their power needs reliably and cost-effectively for years to come.”

SRP has entered into previous collaborations with Google, including the 260-megawatt Sonoran Solar Energy Center, in Buckeye, which has a 1 gigawatt-hour battery energy storage system; the 88-megawatt Storey Energy Center in Coolidge and the Babbitt Ranch Energy Center wind farm in northern Arizona. Those projects will contribute power to Google’s in-the-works Mesa data center.

Google started construction in the summer of 2023 on the first of three phases of its $1 billion data center in southeast Mesa.

SRP said its current energy storage capacity — at eight facilities — is nearly 1,300 megawatts, with 1,000 of that being battery storage and 200 megawatts of pumped hydro storage.

SRP serves more than a million customers, primarily in and around the Valley.