Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has selected esVolta to develop, build, and operate the Hummingbird Energy Storage project, a 75MW/300MWh lithium-ion battery storage facility in Santa Clara County, California.
Image: esVolta to build Hummingbird Energy Storage project for PG&E. Photo: courtesy of Fré Sonneveld on Unsplash.
Scheduled to be commissioned by December 2020, the Hummingbird Energy Storage project is expected to be among the largest battery projects in the world.
To be constructed near the city of Morgan Hill, the new energy storage project is designed to deliver an affordable and reliable capacity resource for PG&E. It is also expected to support the transition of California towards a cleaner and more resilient electric system, said esVolta.
The company further said that the Californian energy storage project will also offer a range of energy and ancillary services to the state’s electric grid, improving reliability and enabling greater ability to integrate renewable energy resources like wind and solar energy.
esVolta president Randolph Mann said: “esVolta is delighted to be selected by PG&E for the Hummingbird project. PG&E is a leading North American energy company and a key customer for esVolta, and this contract award is an important milestone for our company as we build towards our goal of assembling a large portfolio of utility-scale, advanced energy storage projects.”
Last month, PG&E submitted a request to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) seeking approval for four energy storage projects in California with a combined capacity of nearly 567MW. Included in this is the Hummingbird Energy Storage project.
The other three energy storage projects proposed by the Californian gas and power utility are the 182.5MW lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS), a 300MW BESS and a 10MW BESS.
The 182.5MW project known as the Moss Landing Energy Storage will be developed by Tesla while the 300MW project dubbed as Vistra Moss Landing Energy Storage will be developed by Dynegy Marketing and Trade. The 10MW BESS, known as AERS Energy Storagebe, will be developed by Micronoc at customer sites and interconnected to local substations in the South Bay.
All the four energy storage facilities, including the Hummingbird Energy Storage project, will all be built in the Moss Landing local sub-area in South Bay.