State utility Arizona Public Service Co. (APS) plans to add more than 1 GW of clean and alternative energy sources to its power supply. APS issued a request for proposals (RFP) to address the state’s growing population and meet its clean energy goals.
“Arizona is one of the fastest-growing states in the country and the power we provide communities and businesses is the backbone of our state’s prosperity, safety and well-being,” said Justin Joiner, VP of resource management at APS. “There’s a historic population boom happening and it’s our job to plan and invest in an affordable energy future with long-term sustainability and reliability our customers can count on 24/7, 365 days a year.”
APS is conducting an RFP to meet the power needs of residential and business customers with affordable, reliable and clean electricity through the 2025-2027 time frame. This RFP is open to all technologies, including supply-side and non-supply-side resources. Proposed projects must be in service beginning in 2025 through June 2027. APS is seeking approximately 1,000 to 1,500 MW of resources, including up to 600 to 800 MW of renewable resources.
APS’s portfolio of new resources will be in service for its 1.3-million customers no later than 2024. APS will have 425 MW of solar power and 635 MW of battery storage coming online from a previous RFP.
News item from Arizona Public Service Co.
Solarman says
“This RFP is open to all technologies, including supply-side and non-supply-side resources. Proposed projects must be in service beginning in 2025 through June 2027. APS is seeking approximately 1,000 to 1,500 MW of resources, including up to 600 to 800 MW of renewable resources.”
APS ended up with a “black eye” in 2019 when the McMicken switching station has a thermal runaway event and fire then an explosion that injured 8 fire fighters, 4 of them seriously. This year and a half inquiry allowed for redesigning the utility scale ESS to include “partitioning” of cells into battery modules and then modules into racks. Venting of the modules to outside air to prevent the buildup of volatile battery off gassing and redesign of the “fire suppression system” of the ESS unit. Since then, the industry has been sold on the efficacy and safety of (LFP) battery cells to make up the energy storage packs. Additional alarms for outgassing remotely monitored and sent through a SCADA system to provide safety for first responders and personnel. Instead of putting all of the ESS components into a cargo container, a large pad is poured on site and the battery modules, transformers, inverter(s) are all set separately to allow for (modular) replacement of power components and battery storage units separately. IF the utility industry is really serious about their longevity and robustness of their ESS units, they will go with the less energy dense (LTO) Lithium titanate cells and have a more stable, faster charge/discharge ESS with the ability to design a site with 5,000 charge/discharge cycles up to around 20,000 charge/discharge cycles for a system that is useful for something like 15 to 55 years of energy storage. New technologies like AMBRI liquid metal ESS using Tin and salt interfaces can cycle many times a day and last for 20 or so years in daily use. No thermal run away, no special fire suppression, these are keyed to short term frequency and voltage regulation along the grid, not long-term energy storage. This would be excellent for the many dispersed switching stations to have a few MWh energy storage available for on/off surges during hot summer days and A/C units cycling, well into the nighttime hours.
This will be interesting to see just how many bids will be received, what the mix of generation used will be and how cost-effective O&M will be with these ‘technologies’ in place. I’d really like to see some (EPC) entities come up with proposals including solar PV, with redox flow batteries and proposals of designs that can take (all) of the days solar PV generation, store it during the solar PV harvest time of day and dispatch this at night to get rid of the ‘notion’, “What do you do when the sun sets?” The Arizona desert has a lot of ‘reflective’ sands that can extend the solar PV harvest portion of the day in both winter and summer months. Using east to west single tracking, bifacial solar PV panels, which at this time may be cheaper to install since they have been given a pass on 201 tariffs for now. One can take that at least 6 sun hours a day in the desert and turn it into at least 8 hours a day in winter and from 10 to 12 sun hours during the summer. So, with the right design and execution in the Arizona desert one can get 33% capacity during the winter months on average to 42% to 50% capacity on average during the summer months.