Southern California Edison to bring 770 MW of energy storage capacity to region
Thanks to seven new contracts, Southern California Edison (SCE) plans to create 770 megawatts of additional battery-based energy storage resources to the region, marking one of the nation’s largest energy storage additions to date.
“These new emissions-free projects will help us ensure the reliability of the grid for our customers and integrate an ever-increasing amount of clean renewable energy over the next decade,” William Walsh, SCE vice president of Energy Procurement & Management, said.
The contracts — stemming from bids by Southern Power, TerraGen Power, NextEra Energy Resources and LS Power — are meant to enhance grid reliability and shore up potential energy shortfalls, like aging natural gas plants, increasing need to integrate wind and solar resources, and shifts in peak time power use. Each project will be used to help integrate energy from intermittent wind and solar resources onto the grid while providing some relief in the face of the inevitable retirement of several large coastal once-through cooling plants over the next three years.
Most of these projects will be co-located with an adjacent solar power plant. They will be at the same point of interconnection and mark a first for California’s grid. It also keeps SCE moving toward the statewide greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets set for 2030.
