According to foreign media reports, the planned deployment of a 1.8GWh battery storage project in the service area of San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E) and Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), investor-owned utilities (IOU), has made new progress.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) authorized San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E) on February 10 to construct three battery storage systems with a scale of 161MW/664MWh.The three battery storage systems are expected to be deployed by the end of 2022 and early 2023.
The California public utilities commission (CPUC) also announced more details of the 300MW/1,200MWh Nighthawk battery storage project being built by energy developer Tenaska and renewable energy developer Arevon, which will be deployed in the San Diego gas & electric company (SDG&E) service area.
These projects are part of a new set of programs derived from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) directive, which is provided to state load service entities (Lses), including utilities, to procure additional energy to support grid operations. California has suffered a number of unplanned power outages due to the risk of forest fires, and the state has set a goal of having a zero-carbon power system by 2045.
Miguel Romero, Vice President of energy innovation at San Diego Gas & Electric company (SDG&E), said, "Investing in advanced technologies such as energy storage systems is critical to advancing California's aggressive climate goals, which include achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions and the added benefit of making the power system more resilient."
San Diego Gas & Electric Company's (SDG&E) planned deployment of three battery storage systems is the latest in a series of projects owned and operated by the company, which has a cumulative installed capacity of 145MW by the end of 2022 and approximately 300MW by the end of 2023.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved the Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract for the 161MW project between San Diego Gas and Electric Company (SDG&E) and Mitsubishi, Fluence, and a build-owd-transfer contract with Coned Electric Company. The total cost of the three projects is about $399.2 million
Instead of directly investing in and operating battery storage projects, PG&E has chosen to source power and services from third-party owned battery storage projects.
The Nighthawk battery Storage project is the second largest of nine battery storage projects Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) announced last month, with a total size of 1.6GW/6.4GWh. One of the largest is an expansion of the moss Landing Battery Storage System, currently the largest in the world. These will bring the battery storage system procured by PG&E by mid-2024 to 3,330MW of installed capacity, 20 percent of which has already been deployed and connected to the grid.
The Nighthawk battery storage project will connect to a Sycamore Canyon substation that will deliver large amounts of electricity from a solar power facility deployed in the California desert to customers in the San Diego area, energy developer Tenaska said.
The Nighthawk battery Storage project will be deployed in an existing industrial park with one-year construction expected to begin in 2023.
The project will be built using Tesla's Megapack battery storage system: Arevon has a 250MW/1,000MWh battery storage system in operation in California and Nevada by the end of 2021.
Arevon has signed a 2GW/6GWh supply agreement with Tesla to build Megapacks battery storage systems into a portfolio of nine battery storage projects Arevon is developing with Tenaska in California, according to industry press reports in September.
San Diego Gas and Electric Company's (SDG&E) new project specifically addresses the California Public Utilities Commission's (CPUC) emergency reliability rulemaking process, while Pacific Gas and Electric Company's (PG&E) nine battery storage projects relate to its June 2021 "decision to require procurement to address medium-term reliability." The latter requires the Load Service Entity (LSE) to procure or deploy 11.5GW of energy storage systems with a total installed capacity in order to begin delivering power service to customers by June 2026, phased in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
The medium-term reliability decision also led to the procurement of the world's first long-term energy storage system, awarded to an eight-hour lithium-ion battery storage project awaiting approval for deployment.
PG&E will also issue a second phase of competitive bidding later this year for energy storage projects that will begin providing power in 2025 and 2026
