Lead battery developer NorthStar announced on April 25 that it will partner City Utilities of Springfield, Missouri, US, in a pilot project to install its Blue+ thin plate lead batteries as a back-up power system during peak usage for the utility’s 111,000 customers.

The batteries will be monitored by NorthStar’s remote management solution, ACE. NorthStar’s ACE product is widely tipped to be the winner in the Battery Council International innovation awards that will be presented at its annual convention next week.

Springfield is powered by gas turbines, but when there is likely to be demand for more power the extra supply needed can take up to 48 hours to distribute, NorthStar CEO Hans Lidén told BESB.

“So if you have a peak in power, to start it up takes a long time and is costly to distribute,” he said. “The city has close ties with its surrounding industry so it knows when there is likely to be a demand for more power, but it takes too long to get it up and running. It’s also costly to maintain.”

NorthStar’s 1,120 batteries will be housed in two containers, said Lidén. They have 2MW-4 MW at 100% DOD, and 1 MW at 40% DOD.