A REV Renewables energy storage project.
At the Jan. 19 California Community Power (CC Power) board meeting, members of the Joint Powers Agency voted to enter into an energy storage service agreement with REV Renewables for 69 MW/552 MWh of long-duration energy storage. The REV Renewables Tumbleweed project will be a CAISO grid-connected, lithium-ion battery storage resource located near Rosamond, in Kern County, California, with an expected online date of 2026.
“Long-duration energy storage is a vital resource, needed to amplify the value of renewable power, and accelerate California’s shift to a clean, reliable and affordable grid,” said Girish Balachandran, California Community Power Board Chair and Silicon Valley Clean Energy CEO. “This first project is an exciting milestone that shows how CCAs work together to advance our shared goals in the transition to a carbon-free grid.”
The California Public Utilities Commission Mid-Term Reliability Procurement order (Decision 21-06-035) requires all CPUC-jurisdictional load serving entities, including CC Power Members, to procure from energy storage facilities capable of discharging for a minimum of 8 hours. This project satisfies approximately 55% of the long-duration storage compliance requirements of the participating members.
This joint procurement effort for long-duration energy storage began before the CPUC issued the new procurement order when a subset of the CC Power members issued a Request for Offers (RFO) in Oct. 2020 seeking to procure cost-effective and viable long-duration storage resources.
Participation in the RFO and resulting projects is voluntary for each CC Power member. The participating agencies for this project are CleanPowerSF, Peninsula Clean Energy, Redwood Coast Energy Authority, San Jose Clean Energy, Silicon Valley Clean Energy, Sonoma Clean Power Authority and Valley Clean Energy. Participating members will follow their own review and approval processes with their local, elected boards.
The Tumbleweed project adheres to the long-duration storage enhanced conditions adopted by the CC Power Board for this procurement effort. It will be constructed under a Project Labor Agreement, assuring prevailing wages and use of apprenticeship programs and is expected to create dozens of new jobs.
The ongoing RFO process as well as member participation have been discussed during noticed, public meetings of the CC Power board. Additional projects identified during the competitive solicitation process will be discussed at upcoming meetings. Meeting information is available at cacommunitypower.org/meetings.
News item from California Community Power
I believe the prospect of solar PV; wind generation AND energy storage became “noticeable” by two projects in 2016 and 2017. In 2016 Xcel Energy in Colorado went out to bid posting the bid information online. What they got back from small to large energy construction companies were bids for solar PV, wind generation farms and many of these bids also added costs for energy storage as part of the project bid. When the overall cost was examined several of the solar PV or wind farms with energy storage came out cheaper to own and operate than the old, fueled coal fired plants they were to replace.
In 2017 when the “big battery” was installed across the Neoen wind farm in Australia, the fueled generation companies dismissed the 100MW/129MWh ESS as a “six-minute solution”. This one “small” utility scale ESS has been used to keep the grid up when the Loy Yang coal fired plant failed offline suddenly during a hot summer day. With the Neoen wind farm and ESS, the wind farm was able to keep the grid out of cascading grid failure and has been successfully used for grid services like frequency and voltage regulation. This ESS paid for itself in stacked grid services revenues in about 2.5 years of operation. Stacking several revenue streams into one asset amortizes this asset much sooner than a fueled Peaker plant, coal fired plant and as natural gas (commodity) prices increase, solar PV, wind generation and energy storage will become more cost effective than fueled generation in general.