2003: Fairbanks is connected to the world's largest storage battery, built to provide Alaska's second-biggest city with an uninterrupted power supply.

Fairbanks' remote location and sub-Arctic climate makes supplying reliable power to the city of 32,000 difficult. In deep winter, the temperature in Fairbanks is almost constantly subzero, dropping as low as minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit The situation is complicated by the fact that Alaska isn't connected to the power grid that keeps the lower 48 humming.

As a result, Fairbanks used to experience a serious, "cascading" blackout every two or three years, along with a number of smaller failures every month. Since the mountain couldn't come to Muhammad, it was necessary to devise another source of reliable local power.

The answer turned out to be a massive battery, the largest ever built, that now sits in a warehouse on the outskirts of Fairbanks. According to ABB Communications Services, the power-components specialist that built it, the battery can generate up to 40 megawatts of power – enough to keep 12,000 people supplied with electricity – for seven minutes. That's long enough to fire up the city's backup diesel generators and restore the power supply.

The battery energy-storage system, or BESS, which cost $35 million to build, contains 13,760 nickel-cadmium cells weighing a total of 1,400 tons and covering more than 10,000 square feet.

BESS is controlled by a Pentium PC-based platform programmed to provide all the essential services, including a complicated temperature-control system designed to withstand the rigors of the Alaskan winter.

In its first two years of operation, BESS reportedly prevented at least 81 power failures, an average of more than three per month. In a hostile environment like the area around Fairbanks, that can mean the difference between life and death.

Source: Various