BayWa r.e., a renewable energy developer and services provider, has entered a power purchase agreement (PPA) with San Diego Community Power (SDCP), a not-for-profit community choice energy program serving five cities in the San Diego region.
Under the terms of the agreement, SDCP will purchase power for 20 years from the Jacumba Valley Ranch (JVR) Energy Park being developed by BayWa r.e. near Jacumba Hot Springs in San Diego County, a project that pairs a 90 MWAC solar array with a 70-MW/280-MWh, DC-coupled battery energy storage system.
“The renewable energy produced and stored at the JVR Energy Park will be an important foundational block of SDCP’s planned power supply portfolio,” said Joe Mosca, chair of the SDCP board and Encinitas city councilmember. “Working with an experienced renewables developer such as BayWa r.e. gives us confidence that we will meet our clean energy and climate goals.”
The JVR site, which consists of flat, formerly agricultural land located adjacent to SDG&E transmission infrastructure. The Jacumba agreement represents SDCP’s first solar + storage PPA in San Diego County. As part of the development plan, the project has committed to funding improvements to the local community park as well as the preservation of 435 acres of native habitat.
Construction on the project is set to begin in early 2022 and is expected to create approximately 350 construction jobs, using a “Project Labor Agreement” with local unions. JVR Energy Park is expected to reach full operational status in Q1 2023. Once interconnected to the San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) transmission grid, the power plant will generate enough electricity to power at least 52,000 SDCP customer households annually.
SDCP was formed in fall 2019 and launched electricity supply services in March 2021 for municipal customers in the five-member cities of Chula Vista, Encinitas, Imperial Beach, La Mesa and San Diego. It began serving commercial and industrial customers in June 2021 and will launch its residential phase in the first quarter of 2022. The program provides local control and consumer choice regarding energy decisions on a large scale for the first time in the region’s history.
“JVR Energy Park will be a major step forward in the deployment of storage-integrated utility-scale solar in California, delivering competitively priced clean power as well as resiliency and reliability to the grid,” said Jam Attari, CEO of BayWa r.e. solar projects in the United States. “We’re excited to partner with a forward-looking community choice aggregator like San Diego Clean Power on this innovative project.”
News item from BayWa r.e.
Solarman says
The CCA has found a place in Southern California and such instances like this will push SDG&E into a ‘wires only’ middleman. When push comes to shove, sooner or later these IOU utilities will be a speck in the energy market as the push for FERC to embolden the wholesale electricity market nation wide is bringing rulings like 841 and 2222 to bring outside entities with energy storage plans into the wholesale market mix. A great deal of the large scale utility solar PV and Wind generation projects. The IOU utility will (have) to learn DER partnerships, bi-directional grids and EaaS, Energy as a Service to make money in the electricity business. Grabbing wholesale electricity and then packing it with “bundled costs” for the retail energy side is going to fade when folks start paying it forward and cut out the middleman and their overhead. Folks are finding out real fast in high electricity rate regions that a lot of solar PV on the roof some smart energy storage in the garage and their own charge station for a BEV can save enough in energy costs both for electricity and ‘gasoline’ each month to pay for their system in less than 10 years and allow them to spend this saved monies on something else in the household budget like homeowners insurance, car insurance, property taxes, groceries.