EDF Renewables North America (EDFR) and Clean Power Alliance (CPA) announced the signing of a 15-year PPA for the Desert Quartzite Solar-plus-Storage project. The project, consisting of a 300-MWAC solar project coupled with a 600-MWh battery energy storage system (BESS), is expected to begin delivery of clean electricity to CPA’s customers throughout Los Angeles and Ventura Counties in February 2024. The CPA Board of Directors approved the long-term contract during its September meeting.
The Desert Quartzite Solar-plus-Storage Project is located on unincorporated land in Riverside County, California, administered by the Federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The BLM designated this area as a Solar Energy Zone (SEZ) and Development Focus Area, land set aside for utility-scale renewable energy development. The project will utilize horizontal single-axis tracking solar PV technology; and is expected to create more than 800 construction jobs.
By coupling the solar facility with an energy storage solution, electricity produced during peak solar hours can be dispatched later in the day, thereby creating a balance between electricity generation and demand. Energy storage can further smooth electricity prices and provide grid stability in an environmentally friendly way.
“The clean reliable energy we will receive from the Desert Quartzite facility fits perfectly within our mission to improve the lives and environment of our customers and communities,” said Clean Power Alliance executive director Ted Bardacke. “Our Board has identified solar + storage as being key to our continued growth and a means to further improve reliability for our millions of customers. This project will also create many more green jobs here in Southern California.”
News item from EDF Renewables North America
Solarman says
“The project, consisting of a 300-MWAC solar project coupled with a 600-MWh battery energy storage system (BESS), is expected to begin delivery of clean electricity to CPA’s customers throughout Los Angeles and Ventura Counties in February 2024. The CPA Board of Directors approved the long-term contract during its September meeting.”
The “thing here” is that this project is about 20 miles away from one of the largest ever proposed solar PV farms in California the McCoy wash solar PV project. It is built to only 250MWac right now, was set to be “originally” a four phase project on 10,000 acres and a build out of 1GWp. This site was never finished and has been “curtailed” because of the “duck curve”. It is foolish to set aside this land and not finish the job. One could actually take about 6GWh of energy storage from the McCoy site every day and use it during that 4 PM to 9 PM TOU each day. It could also be throttled overnight and provide Southern California with 500MWh of generation for 12 hours each day in a time shifted manner. The very hypocrisy of early solar PV farms in Riverside county has been with the amount of acreage available, NO ONE is coming back to these old sites and installing redox flow batteries in several GWh scale that have been modeled and can be done for $1/watt installed per GWh of energy storage constructed. Makes one wonder if you set a goal of 10GWh of redox flow battery storage, could you not do this for less than $0.50/watt installed, $0.40/watt? Another sad thing about McCoy is that the old solar PV panels manufactured by First Solar are earlier model panels. IF just these old panels were replaced today with the latest/greatest offering from First Solar, the site would generate about 389MWdc and with the newest inverters available could be about 370MWac. IF the rest of the site was built out to the 10,000 acre limit, one could expect to have three new phases with single axis tracking East to West and add 2 to 4 hours of energy generation each day. This site could provide 6.66 GWh a day in Winter time and around 9.99 GWh per day in the Summer time. Somewhere along the way I’m sure this is a PPA issue, with California’s (mandates) it should be a resiliency and technology roll out for the future.