INTERVIEW: Spearmint executive discusses Pumpkinvine BESS project in Howard County, IN

In an interview with NPM, Spearmint Energy Chief Development Officer Peter Rood discussed the firm’s beleaguered 400 MW Pumpkinvine Storage project in Kokomo, Indiana, as well as the firm’s broader storage development pipeline.

Rood describes Pumpkinvine as one of Spearmint’s advancing projects with a COD currently slated between 2028 and 2030. At 400 MW, it would be one of the most significant storage projects in the state; NPM is currently only tracking roughly 100 MW of operating storage in the state, though it has more than 17 GW of capacity in its interconnection queue. None of the projects NPM is tracking in the state are larger than 400 MW.

Rood says part of the reason the firm was interested in siting the project in Kokomo has to do with surrounding industry that could be the source of future load need; he notes Kokomo has a battery manufacturing facility near the project as well as two automotive manufacturing plants in the area.

StarPlus Energy, a joint venture of Samsung and Stellantis, is planning on opening a USD 2.5bn gigafactory early next-year for EV battery manufacturing, and announced plans last year for a second USD 3.2bn phase for 2027.

“The potential to support large loads like the existing manufacturing facilities in the area] is part of why we targeted this area for this project,” Rood said.

Additionally, no other battery storage projects have been sited in the immediate area before, further increasing the potential impact of Pumpkinvine. Finally, Rood notes Indiana is an interesting state to develop storage as a whole due to state level safety regulations for utility-scale batteries. While the regulations do not currently include incentives, he says the fact that legislation was on the books at all may be useful from a community outreach perspective.

“Indiana is one of the first states taking a proactive approach on this and we thought that was beneficial because we’d be able to point to that,” Rood said.

NPM queue data identified a pre-operational 400 MW storage project in Howard County, which houses Kokomo. The company’s original developer BW Solar had sold the project, alongside another Indiana storage project Green Eagle to Spearmint last December.

Local pushback

However, Kokomo’s lack of familiarity with storage may be the root of some of the pushback the project has faced in recent months.

Spearmint’s request to secure re-zoning for Pumpkinvine’s site, which is near a residential area, was rejected by city officials last month. Local opposition to clean energy projects in Indiana is common as evidenced by EDF’s challenges getting its Paddlefish Solar project through local approvals.

“Community engagement at each project is different with varying levels of interest,” Rood noted. “We spend a significant amount of time trying to figure out the right path for engagement in each area where we are seeking to develop to make sure we’re getting everybody educated on the project who wishes to be.”

Spearmint is exploring a potential site move, in response to some of the community concerns, and expects to jump back into its efforts to secure a future for the project in January following the holiday season

While the experience has led to, at best, a delay getting the project approved, Rood says he generally prefers running into challenges early in the process and working through them then rather than having them crop up later in the project’s development.

“Whether we leave with or without a permit, our takeaway is if there is significant public concern about a project, that’s likely not where we want the project to be long-term,” Rood said. “Spearmint’s business is to own and operate projects for the long-term. The way to start the relationship in a community is not to have a long public hearing.”

Regardless of the outcome of Pumpkinvine, Rood is not discouraged about developing storage in MISO as a whole, despite the relative infancy of the region’s storage market compared to hotbeds like ERCOT and CAISO, thanks to the region’s extremely high load forecasts and some projections indicating the region will reach a shortage of power during the next decade.

“It’s interesting to see almost all of the major ISOs are getting ready for substantial load growth,” Rood said. “I think there’s challenges coming across the spectrum that batteries will play a key part in. Our projects like Pumpkinvine are trying to make sure there are batteries installed in time so that there is no interruption in reliability as the energy transition continues.”

Right now, Rood says Spearmint has storage projects sited across various states in MISO including Indiana, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. Many of these projects are of significant scale, as well; Rood notes Pumpkinvine is “not the biggest nor smallest project we have.” While Rood notes “storage is very modular” with scalable project sizes possible during the interconnection study process, he says Spearmint’s primary approach to siting in MISO is “focused on identifying where the greatest needs are.”

“Pumpkinvine started as part of our overall view of where those needs are, where we think we can have the best energy storage resources, and we think we can provide benefits at a reasonable cost and timeline,” Rood said. “We typically start at what we think is the upper reasonable end [for project scope] and we can fine-tune that based on interconnection studies. Sometimes if you can change your project size by 20 or 50 MW, you can make a huge cost difference, and it can avoid triggering a major interconnection network upgrade.”


*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers.

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