By Mickey Schommer
Contributing Writer
GREEN BAY – In the fall of 2022, the Northeast Wisconsin Technical College (NWTC) was awarded $300,000 in an effort to reduce energy consumption by installing environmentally-positive battery storage systems at the Great Lakes Energy Education Center on the campus.
This project was recently finished and has helped the center become a nearly net-zero building, which means that it produces nearly as much energy as it consumes.
“The problem with [being nearly net-zero] is we don’t produce the energy when we need it,” John Hippensteel, instructor of solar energy at NWTC. “We sell back to WPS 60% of the energy that we produce because we’re producing [energy] when the sun is shining, during the day, and it’s a tremendous amount of energy [and] it’s more than we need most days, most times of the year.
“When we get to the winter time, it’s a little tough; the sun doesn’t always cooperate. We’re rescheduling our battery banks so that we can take advantage of nighttime energy and offset our daytime energy. We pay a lot more during the day than we do at night, so if the sun isn’t cooperating… then we can just take advantage [of the battery banks] to make the grid more efficient.”
The new battery storage will allow NWTC to charge the battery bank during the day when energy production is at its peak and use the energy from the storage at night or during cloudy days when energy production is at a low.
“It helps make [our utilities] more efficient and certainly reduces the cost on our building for energy,” Hippensteel stated.
“If we’re overproducing [energy for the building], then we put [the energy] into the batteries. If we’re overconsuming, then energy will be taken out of the batteries so we don’t have to buy as much.”
When asked about the future of net-zero facilities, Hippensteel said, “All these renewable energy power plants are great to offset the energy consumed, but when we have enough of them, now we have to store that energy – kind of like [NWTC is]. Batteries are one way to store it. They’re becoming more economical.”
As for the Solar Energy Technology program at NWTC, storage becomes an important part of the process and the battery storage addition has given students a lot of hands-on learning opportunities, Hippensteel added.
“Almost all of the solar on campus has been led and designed and installed by students,” he said.
The grant, which has allowed for the new battery storage units, shines a light on NWTC’s Solar Energy Technology program, as well as the long-term benefits of renewable energy.