Southern California Edison Signs Contracts for 590 MW of Battery Energy Storage
Southern California Edison has signed long-term contracts for four projects totaling 590 megawatts of battery energy storage resources. These contracts increase SCE’s total amount of installed and procured battery storage capacity to approximately 2,050 MWs. SCE hopes this will help further enhance the region’s electric system reliability needs.
Three of the four projects are utility-scale projects totaling 585 MW and will take advantage of lithium-ion batteries that can store energy for use later. The fourth project is a 5 MW demand response contract that will use energy from customer-owned energy storage. Economically impacted communities that suffer most from the effects of air pollution will provide 5% of the MWs for this project.
One of the many ways these flexible energy resources can be used is by capturing solar energy during the day and distributing the energy as the sun sets and energy use remains high. They can also be used to respond to the California Independent System Operator signals, high-demand events, heat waves, or when the energy grid is strained.
The projects are expected to come online by August 2022 and 2023.
| Company | Project Name | Size (MW) | Online Date |
| Recurrent Energy | Crimson | 200 | 8/1/2022 |
| 174 Power Global / Hanwha Group | Eldorado Valley | 60 | 8/1/2022 |
| NextEra Energy | Desert Peak | 325 | 8/1/2023 |
| Sunrun | Behind-the-Meter Storage | 5 | 8/1/2023
|
As laid out in Pathway 2045, SCE estimates the state needs to add 30 GW of utility-scale storage to the grid and 10 GW of storage from distributed energy resources to meet the state’s clean energy and carbon neutrality goals. These new contracts will further help California meet these goals while providing additional grid reliability. They also help improve California’s economy by creating craft and skilled clean energy jobs while reducing GHG emissions.
The contracts will require California Public Utilities Commission approval and SCE expects to submit them for approval before the end of the year.
SCE has been ramping up energy storage efforts as of late. In May, it announced that it signed seven contracts totaling 770 megawatts of battery-based energy storage resources to help enhance the region’s electric system reliability needs, which will benefit C&I and residential customers alike. The recently conducted solicitation and the resulting contracts make up one of the country’s largest energy storage procurements.
Source : environmentalleader
