Arevon Energy announced the start of operations at its Eland 1 Solar-plus-Storage Project in Kern County, California. Eland 1 Solar-plus-Storage, based in the city of Mojave, is a 384-MWDC solar project coupled with 150-MW/600-MWh of energy storage.
A second phase of the Eland Solar-plus-Storage Project is currently under construction and is anticipated to be operational in Q1 2025. When both phases are completed, the projects’ combined capacity will total 758 MWDC of solar with 300 MW/1,200 MWh of energy storage.
Eland’s solar and storage configuration enables it to deliver a reliable, predictable energy yield during peak electricity demand periods to the Southern California region. Combining solar panels and battery storage systems play a crucial role in maintaining a steady supply of renewable power, enhancing grid resilience, and responding to critical demand challenges.
Eland 1 is under a long-term power purchase agreement with Southern California Public Power Authority, which will administer the contract for two of its members: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and Glendale Water and Power. San Diego-headquartered SOLV Energy led the engineering, procurement and construction activities for the project.
News item from Arevon
There still seems to be a paradigm “sticking point” in solar PV + BESS energy EPC projects. Entities are settling in on chemical battery cells and packs built around (LFP) as the ‘de facto’ standard, yet, development and application in these large utility projects needs to find EPC using something like the Form Energy Iron/Air ESS or the many redox flow batteries or even projects using Liquified Air Energy Storage, (LAES) that can be built anywhere and scaled to very large 100 hours perhaps up to 100 days of energy storage to accommodate seasonal changes and grid load demands.
The other ‘niggle’ in all of this is previous solar PV projects in say the last 10 years have been built with 1.5 to 1 DC to AC output capacity leaving room for long term panel degradation and the ability to add a large utility scale BESS to the project after initial installation as part of a CIP enhancement. One project in particular comes to mind. The McCoy Wash solar PV farm in Riverside county, CA was established back in 2005 and fell into the regulation hole until First Solar took over the project and had one of the first phases of the project online in 2015. The ‘thing’ here is the original BLM land submission was for 10,000 acres of land. That seems to have been passed by the BLM as development of about 5,000 acres of the land is being used now. With this project new panel efficiencies and cost cuts with mass manufacturing this site could become a 1.2GWpeak site and accommodate something on the order of 800 to 1,000 acres dedicated to a 10GWh iron/air long term energy storage facility from company Form Energy, that would be operable and upgradable in perpetuity, something one can’t necessarily DO with a nuclear fission plant.