The town of Paris in Kenosha County is likely to house Wisconsin’s first solar plant with battery storage. In December, the PSC approved a 200 MW solar farm with a 50 MW power capacity utility-scale battery storage. This would be one of the largest if not the largest battery storage projects in the country (compared with an average 10.8 MW capacity for California storage, and a 30 MW battery. EIA, 2020). Battery storage paired with renewable energy increases grid reliability and resilience and allows power to be used when needed as well, such as at peak times.
Invenergy, a Chicago-based developer building the 300 MW Badger Hollow Solar Farm in Iowa County presently, would build the solar project on 1,400 acres with a 12,000 square foot building to house the batteries. The project would generate electricity for approximately 16,000 homes. The average cost of utility-scale battery storage decreased nearly 70 percent between 2015 and 2018 according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).. WSJ