Initiative to develop battery storage sites in Ontario has grown recently, driven by the IESO’s long term procurement of 4000 MW in energy storage and generation. Due to the nature of these systems, most battery storage sites will be stationed in unenclosed spaces in rural areas. Much of the equipment on the sites – batteries, inverters, and transformers – require substantial cooling. As a result, noise from these cooling units has become a significant constraint and consideration during the design of the sites, impacting the site capacity and need for costly mitigation measures.

Since this scale of battery storage has not been seen in Ontario, the predictions are heavily based on manufacturer test data and lack the benefit of validation with similar pre-existing sites. This presentation will outline the challenges faced in modelling the impact of these sites and how these predictive models have been refined.