Portland General Electric (PGE) and NextEra Energy Resources have announced their plans to construct a major energy facility co-locating wind, solar and battery storage in Eastern Oregon.
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The new project named as Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility will include a 300MW of wind generation, a 50MW of solar generation and a 30MW of battery storage.
PGE said that the new facility is expected to take the company’s wind generation portfolio to a total of more than 1,000MW or 1GW that is drawn from five owned or contracted wind farms in the Northwest. The capacity is adequate to power approximately 340,000 households.
PGE president CEO Maria Pope said: “We’re moving aggressively to integrate smart grid technologies and renewable energy to give customers affordable, clean, low-carbon energy. Wheatridge will be a model for integrating renewable generation and storage to cost-effectively reduce emissions while maintaining a reliable grid.”
With the addition of these new renewable resources, PGE expects to meet about 50% of its customers’ power needs with green energy.
GE Renewable Energy is supplying 120 wind turbines for the Wheatridge project’s wind farm which is to be located north of Lexington, Oregon, in Morrow County. The specifications of equipment to be used at the associated solar farm and battery storage facility are not determined yet.
The company said that Wheatridge project is expected to provide approximately 300 jobs during construction of the wind site and approximately 175 jobs during construction of the solar and storage sites. The combined facilities will be operated by 10 full-time employees following the commissioning for service.
Swaggart Wind Power, an affiliate of MAP Energy, had started development and permitting of the Wheatridge wind farm in 2009. It was acquired By NextEra Energy Resources subsidiary in 2017. Later, NextEra and PGE have expanded the project scope to include solar generation and battery storage.
NextEra Energy Resources president and CEO Armando Pimentel said: “We’re pleased to work with Portland General Electric on the Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility, an exciting opportunity to combine wind, solar and energy storage.