California Utility Plans 387MW Battery Charge

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has sent a request to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for approval of six additional battery energy storage projects totalling 387MW.

The facilities are intended to further integrate clean energy from renewable generation sources while helping to ensure future reliability of the electric system.

The projects include the 127MW Lancaster development in Lancaster in Los Angeles County and the 132MW North Central Valley facility, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources Development, and is located in Linden in San Joaquin County.
There is also the 40MW LeConte owned by a subsidiary LS Power Associates at Calexico in Imperial County, Amcor's 27MW Nexus Renewables US behind-the-meter solution located across a variety of sites in PG&E’s service area, and Global Infrastructure Partners' 46MW Daggett Solar Power 2 and 15MW Daggett Solar Power 3 projects in San Bernardino County.

All the projects have 15-year transmission-connected agreements and comprise lithium-ion batteries.

The Amcor, Lancaster and the LeConte projects are scheduled to come online by August 2022.

The North Central Valley and both Daggett projects are due to be online by August 2023.

The project agreements resulted from a competitive request for offers PG&E launched in July and complete the company's procurement requirements outlined in a November 2019 CPUC decision that identified potential electric system reliability issues beginning in summer of 2021.

In that decision, the CPUC authorised PG&E to procure at least 716.9MW of system reliability resources to come online between 1 August 2021 and 1 August 2023.

In May, PG&E announced the results of its first round of procurement 423MW of battery energy storage capacity, scheduled to be online by August 2021.

PG&E senior vice president of energy policy and procurement Fong Wan said: “The next few years will be pivotal for the deployment and integration of utility-scale battery energy storage onto the grid.

“PG&E has awarded contracts for battery energy storage projects totalling more than 1000MW of capacity to be deployed through 2023, all of which contribute to meeting California’s ambitious clean energy goals while ensuring grid efficiency and reliability, reducing the need to build additional fossil fuel generation plants, and keeping customer costs affordable.”