Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), a Californian gas and power utility is seeking approval of four energy storage projects with a combined capacity of around 567MW in the US state of California from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
The four energy storage facilities will all be located in the South Bay – Moss Landing local sub-area.
They are all part of the accelerated solicitation for energy storage projects authorized by CPUC to be launched by PG&E to meet reliability requirements for three local sub-areas in the northern central valley and spanning Silicon Valley to the central coast.
In late February, PG&E issued its request for offers for developing energy storage projects and after evaluation of the bids, selected an offer for a utility-owned project and three offers for third-party owned projects.
According to PG&E, the utility-owned project that has been proposed is a 182.5 MW lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) located within its Moss Landing substation. To be developed by Tesla, the project named as Moss Landing Energy Storage will be transmission-connected and will address local capacity requirements.
On the other hand, the three contracts awarded by PG&E for third-party owned projects are lithium-ion battery projects as well. They include the stand-alone, transmission-connected 300MW BESS to be developed in Moss Landing by Dynegy Marketing and Trade, and named as Vistra Moss Landing Energy Storage.
The other two projects are the 75MW BESS to be developed by Hummingbird Energy Storage near the city of Morgan Hill and the 10MW mNOC AERS Energy Storage to be developed by Micronoc at customer sites and interconnected to local substations in the South Bay.
Subject to approval from the CPUC, the first of the four proposed energy storage projects is slated to be commissioned by the end of 2019 while the other projects are lined up to be placed into operations by the end of 2020.
PG&E grid integration and innovation vice president Roy Kuga said: “Energy storage plays an increasingly important role in California’s clean energy future, and while it has been a part of PG&E’s power mix for decades – starting with the Helms Pumped Storage Plant in the 1980’s – recent decreases in battery prices are enabling energy storage to become a competitive alternative to traditional solutions.
“As a result, we believe that battery energy storage will be even more significant in enhancing overall grid reliability, integrating renewables, and helping customers save energy and money.”