Webinar | What to look for when selecting BESS equipment
GridVest partnered with Mayfield Renewables for a practical deep-dive into BESS equipment selection — one of the highest-stakes decisions developers and EPCs face today. With tariff volatility, tightening FEOC scrutiny, evolving fire codes, and financing friction all in play, choosing the wrong system can turn a small upfront savings into a much larger loss.
Alex Shoer and Liam O'Brien from GridVest, joined by Tyson Bittrich of Mayfield Renewables, walked through a seven-part framework for evaluating battery equipment. The session drew on real project examples from the field — from a rural Washington clinic to an urban SoCal hotel — to show how these decisions play out in practice.
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Key Takeaways
Define your application before you talk to suppliers. Whether you're optimizing for resilience, arbitrage, grid services, or EV load support, application shapes every downstream decision — from sizing to EMS to fire code requirements.
Model TCO, not just CapEx. A $50/kWh savings on cells can become a $200/kWh loss when you factor in degradation, warranty exclusions, O&M costs, and end-of-life replacement. Round-trip efficiency and warranted cycle depth are the real financial levers.
Supplier quality means more than a spec sheet. Bankability, verified field performance, local support availability, and the strength of the controls stack all matter — especially when warranty claims arise in years 5–10.
FEOC is a filter, not a strategy. Model both the FEOC-compliant + ITC path and the non-FEOC path side by side, stress-test the non-FEOC premium at multiple price points, and get third-party traceability documentation early — lenders will require it.
Evaluate EMS compatibility upfront. Misconfigured controls are a leading cause of underperformance in the field. Edge-based, inverter-agnostic EMS architectures outperform cloud-dependent or single-vendor stacks in long-term reliability and sourcing flexibility.
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