Cranberry Point Energy Storage: A Landmark 150-MW Battery Facility in Massachusetts
A 150-MW/300-MWh battery storage farm is now supplying power and delivering grid reliability services into the Independent System Operator of New England after two years of construction and eight years of development in Plymouth County, Massachusetts.
Cranberry Point Energy Storage is completed and operational, managed by developer and owner Plus Power. The project is in the town of Carver and is a standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) not co-located with solar or other generation.
The town of Carver approved Cranberry Point Energy Storage in 2019. Construction began in December 2023.
"Plus Power is proud to deliver this landmark facility for the Commonwealth and honored to contribute to power reliability, energy affordability, and emissions reduction in the region," said Alex Fraenkel, co-founder and executive vice chairman of Plus Power, in a statement. "We look forward to being a model for ISO-NE on battery performance and an excellent neighbor for many years to come."
Completing and interconnecting Cranberry Point into the ISO-New England system is a big step forward toward the grid operator’s goal of 1,000 MWh of battery energy storage this year. Cranberry Point is co-located near a 115-kV Eversource Energy substation, and absorbs excess electricity when customer demand is low.
The battery array discharges that power into the grid during times of peak demand. This increases system reliability to balance the intermittency of renewable energy and also create power reliability assurances for development and AI data centers, according to the release.
“The Cranberry Point energy storage project will help replace some of the capacity of the retiring 1,400-MW Mystic natural gas plant, and the 677-MW retired Pilgrim nuclear plant is also in the same grid subzone,” reads the project website. “As a result, Cranberry Point is optimally sited to ease future transmission congestion and provide energy reliability while providing replacement capacity for a retiring fossil fuel plant.”
Cranberry Point features 82 Tesla Megapack 2 XL battery enclosures. Plus Power worked with Burns & McDonnell on engineering, procurement, and construction of the facility.
Plus Power has called Cranberry Point Energy Storage as the first standalone utility-scale battery system in the ISO-New England grid. Plus Power is also working on the 175-MW/350-MWh Cross Town Energy Storage array in Gorham, Maine, adjacent to Central Maine Power’s 115-kV Moshers substation.
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About the Author
EnergyTech Staff
Rod Walton is senior editor for EnergyTech.com. He has spent 17 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist.
Walton formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.
He can be reached at [email protected].
EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids.
Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.