Recurrent Energy, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar, has signed two 15 year power purchase agreements (PPAs) with Silicon Valley Clean Energy and Monterey Bay Community Power to sell power from 150MW solar project with 180MWh battery storage in California.
Image: Canadian Solar to supply power to two energy companies in California.Photo: Courtesy of chuttersnap/Unsplash.
Canadian Solar stated that the partnership is a result of a joint procurement process that Silicon Valley Clean Energy and Monterey Bay Community Power launched last September, to source cost-effective, renewable power for their respective communities.
Recurrent Energy will supply power from its Slate PV-plus-storage project to be built in Kings County, California. The project is expected to begin commercial operation in 2021.
The energy represented by the contracts is sufficient to be supplied to 37,500 homes, providing Silicon Valley Clean Energy with 55% of the energy, and Monterey Bay with the other 45% of the combined output.
Silicon Valley Clean Energy CEO Girish Balachandran said: “As a community choice aggregator, we are proud to help California lead the transition to clean, reliable and flexible energy.
“We are proud to partner on a new renewable energy project that makes a significant investment to reach our state’s carbon-free energy goals and contribute to solving the state’s grid integration problem by investing in large grid-scale energy storage.”
The storage part of the project includes lithium-ion battery component, which is 45MW ‘nameplate’ with 180MWh of energy capacity. This allows for four hours of flexible energy delivery.
Canadian Solar CEO and chairman Shawn Qu said: “We’re excited to have participated in this joint procurement effort that will not only include solar, but a landmark amount of energy storage for the state of California as well.
“With the integrated storage component, both CCAs will have the flexibility to fill the battery when wholesale energy prices are low and then discharge the energy when prices are higher to meet their unique load requirements in a cost-competitive manner.
“Recurrent Energy was the first developer to close financing for a utility-scale solar project with CCA off-takers and we will leverage this expertise to ensure the project is successful.”
Recently, Canadian Solar’s Recurrent Energy had sold 49% equity stake in the Garland and Tranquillity solar facilities with a total capacity of 260MW for DKK2bn ($307m) to Pensionskassernes Administration (PKA), a pension service provider in Denmark.