Enel Green Power deploying additional renewable, storage capacity to meet demanding Texas heat

As the nation endures sweltering temperatures and Texas, in particular, sees energy demands rise, Enel Green Power announced this week that it had successfully completed its first large-scale hybrid wind project, with additional storage and other renewables underway to relieve pressure.

With the completion of Azure Sky Wind + Storage, Enel added 350 MW of wind capacity and 136.5 MW of storage capacity for the region. It will also add 57 MW of new battery storage capacity at its largest operating projects in Texas: the Roadrunner solar and High Lonesome wind sites.

“We’re committed to connecting Texans with clean and cost-effective electricity through our renewable projects. The Azure Sky wind + storage project and storage additions at Roadrunner and High Lonesome help to add measurable value in the form of storage capacity and reliability to support the state’s electricity system,” Paolo Romanacci, head of Enel Green Power in the U.S. and Canada, said. “Enel Green Power’s projects provide more generation, more resource diversity, and more dispatchable storage – three key elements of Texas’s goal to reform its power grid.”

Building on this, Enel signed an aggregated power purchase agreement (PPA) with corporate partners Akamai, MilliporeSigma, Synopsys, and Uber. Separately, Kellogg Company, HP Hood, and lululemon also signed PPAs for the new clean energy output. Distributed energy needs will be met with the flexible new resources, and ideally, Enel hopes they will help balance intermittent generation profiles in the western region of ERCOT.

By early 2023, Enel intends to oversee a portfolio of 12 battery energy storage systems and 1,290 MW hours in Texas.