2026 Event Schedule

Oklahoma Gas and Electric (OG&E) is Oklahoma's largest electric company, serving more than 907,000 customers in Oklahoma and western Arkansas. The utility is anticipating the rapid adoption of flexible energy storage across its grid – but is faced with the challenge of going “from zero to 60” with this technology.  OG&E recognized the need to comprehensively qualify mobile and stationary battery energy storage by conducting first-hand evaluation of the technical, financial, and operational viability of the technology.

OG&E accomplished this feat by breaking ground and installing a flexible utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) at their distribution testing facility. The 500 kW / 664 kWh BESS pilot allowed OG&E to rapidly narrow their knowledge gap, develop planning, deployment, and operations standards. OG&E robustly tested a variety of applications and use cases such as:

• Grid enhancement and stabilization methods

• Voltage regulation

• Capacity firming
• Microgrid operation
• Electric vehicle (EV) fast charging peak load mitigation

The results and outcomes of the testing enabled OG&E to effectively qualify BESS vs. other solutions and provided a basis to confidently plan for the deployment of much larger BESSs in their territory.

This interactive presentation will give Distributech attendees an opportunity to learn about OG&E and TRC’s collaboration, and the process that lead to the successful pilot. The speakers from OG&E and TRC will discuss their experience, lessons learned, and outcomes, including:

• Pilot planning, conceptualization, and engineering

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  Determining the right pilot size to serve as meaningful proof of concept (and stay within budget)

   

• BESS supplier evaluation and selection

• BESS codes and standards compliance

• Fire safety preparedness
  
  Site installation and civil works

• Interdepartmental collaboration – Grid Innovation, Distribution Planning (EV, DER), Procurement, etc.

• OG&E workforce training

• Test cases and results

• Assessing the costs and benefits of battery energy storage vs. other solutions

• Use cases recommendations

• Mobile energy storage deployment strategies

• Scaling beyond pilot size for field deployment

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  Standards development for integration of utility as well as third-party BESS projects