January 6, 2025 E.S. Boulos Successfully Completes EPC Battery Storage Projects
Three combined BESS sites will provide up to 30 Megawatts of clean hydropower storage in New England
MYR Group companies, including subsidiary E.S. Boulos (ESB), are long term partners in the clean energy transformation and equipped to take on a wide range of renewables projects including battery storage.
Within just the past few years, installations of battery energy storage systems (BESS) have started “booming” as the technology has improved and costs have dropped. Wood Mackenzie analysts anticipate annual U.S. battery storage installations will grow to more than 20GW by 2030. E.S. Boulos (ESB) is one of the MYR Group companies supporting this growing demand.
ESB finished its first BESS projects in 2023: leading a three-site engineer-procure-construct (EPC) package for Brookfield Renewable.
Co-location with a power source such as solar, wind or hydro is common for battery storage. For the three sites, the batteries are charged with hydropower and the stored energy can be discharged when it is most needed.
ESB partnered with an engineering firm to come up with the designs and then constructed the three battery storage facilities (two in Maine and one in New Hampshire) providing a combined 30 megawatts of energy storage. ESB oversaw all civil construction, performed the electrical construction and connected the new BESS sites to the power grid.
“We’re very pleased with [E.S.] Boulos,” said Steve Mockler, Director of Construction Brookfield Renewable. “There have been a lot of challenges that we worked through, but we’ve overcome them all and are very proud of the quality of the work that was done. [We’re] Very pleased with how it’s all turned out.”
The team needed to find ways to work within small, constrained spaces with the heavy equipment necessary to lift more than 30,000 lbs. of batteries. They also faced long lead times for some materials due to the lingering impacts COVID had on manufacturing.
ESB also needed to stop work due to a common soil contaminant. The owner had the contaminated soil removed which finished during the winter, but foundation construction and battery installations had to wait until spring.
Excellent Planning Results in Efficient Installations
Proper planning for the battery installations included using crane pick plans (a check list planning out each lift) and holding daily safety discussions as well as activity hazard analyses. Each morning the team would review the entire pick plan and conduct an activity hazard analysis to ensure every member of the team knew what each person’s role was, where they would be, and who would be running signals and tag lines.
That thorough preparation and focus on safety paid off.
“The picks went VERY well,” said Senior Project Manager Rob Lussier.
The entire project was completed without any recordable injuries thanks to the safety measures in place, proper planning, and diligence of all the team members.
Another thing that helped the battery picks run smoothly was ESB’s logistics coordination. While two of the sites were near old mills with sufficient nearby parking to stage the trucks bringing in the BESS units, the Hollis location did not. Lussier explained that the site was so small there wasn’t enough capacity for the crane to pick up the BESS and stretch out.
To enable the crane to remain in one spot, the solution they devised was to have one tractor trailer loaded with the BESS pull in on one side of the crane, crews would secure all the rigging, then the crane would pick the BESS up and swing it over into place. This process was repeated from one end of the site to the other, one load at a time, until they built themselves out of the site.
The project team was able to find a nearby property where they could stage the loaded tractor trailers. At that location an ESB employee in contact by radio would alert a new truck, once the previous truck was done with the unloading process to make the installation as efficient as possible.
“It was [installed] like clockwork,” Lussier said.
With the first suite of BESS projects now under their belt, E.S. Boulos stands ready to take on more projects like it for new and existing customers.
Whether you need to construct battery energy storage solutions, or a clean energy source like solar, our companies can help you reach your goals.