Financial Services

Battery Storage

Battery Storage Site Visit

Rev. Brian Roberts, Executive Director, UM Stewardship Foundation of GNJ and Rob Zuckerman, Conference CFO, led a group of church leaders to visit a battery storage system at the Atlantic County Utilities Authority.

The purpose of the trip was to get a visual understanding of what these systems look like as well as listen to the amount of noise they generate.

One participant brought a decibels reader which read the levels at “normal conversation, dishwasher.”

The slide show above contains pictures from the trip and below are the videos.

Post-visit Questions & Answers:

There is a gray, electrical unit in front of the white, trailer-looking unit (you will see a sign hanging from it in the picture and I highlight it in the video). Is this part of the overall BESS system, or would it just be the trailer-looking component?
  • I think it’s part of the BESS. The main components of a Solway BESS would be batteries, a transformer, and an inverter. This is a much small battery, so this gray box could house the transformer and/or the inverter. Sometimes this equipment is external to the housing that contains the battery. As the design gets better, the inverter and transformer are starting to be housed inside the battery container.
We do not believe the battery unit was pushing out electric, so it was perhaps “dormant” …. we don’t know. It was very quiet. Does it make more noise when it’s pushing out electric?
  • I think this is correct. BESS charges up early in the morning (12:00 AM to 5:00 AM) and generally discharges late in the afternoon (4:00 PM – 8:00 PM), during peak load times. When it is not charging or discharging, you will hear very little noise decibels. Any minimal noise you hear might be the cooling unit and some sound form the inverter or transformer. When it is charging or discharging, if you are standing inside the enclosure, you will hear noise, maybe 85 DB (equivalent of a food blender, or a running hair dryer). Understand, though, that the enclosure (fence) is set back 20 feet from all the equipment, so anyone standing outside the fence is not going to hear much, closer to 35-45 DB (equivalent of a refrigerator hum or peaceful suburban night). It recedes quickly as you step back from the fence.

Below are some informational documents provided from Solway:

Battery Storage FAQ

BESS FAQs on Fire Safety and Public Health

Solway Battery Storage Safety Presentation Slides

Battery Storage Information Session

Download Battery Storage Information Session slides here

Following up on the Battery Storage information sessions held on 5/12/26, above is the recorded afternoon session for those who may have missed it.

For those who joined either session, we appreciate you taking the first step to educate yourself on the opportunity.  We encourage you to contact Tom at Steeplecom (tmoylan@steeplecom.com) to initiate the next steps in the process.