San Francisco: Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) submitted a request June 29 for approval of four energy storage projects, totaling approximately 567 megawatts, in a filing at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
In January, the CPUC authorized PG&E to launch an accelerated solicitation for energy storage projects capable of meeting reliability needs for three specified local sub-areas in the northern central valley (Pease local sub-area and Bogue local sub-area) and spanning Silicon Valley to the central coast (South Bay – Moss Landing local sub-area).
PG&E issued a request for offers on February 28 and received responses from numerous participants. PG&E has selected one offer for a utility-owned project and three offers for third-party owned projects, all to be located within the South Bay – Moss Landing local sub-area.
The proposed utility-owned project is a 182.5 MW lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) located within PG&E's Moss Landing substation. The transmission-connected BESS will address local capacity requirements and will participate in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) markets, providing energy and ancillary services.
The three contracts awarded for third-party owned projects also are lithium-ion battery projects.
The projects include: a 10MW aggregation of behind-the-meter batteries located at customer sites and interconnected to local substations within the South Bay – Moss Landing local sub-area; a stand-alone, transmission-connected 75MW BESS located near the city of Morgan Hill; and a stand-alone, transmission-connected 300MW BESS located in Moss Landing.
PG&E is implementing transmission solutions, rather than energy storage contracts, for the Pease and Bogue local sub-areas that would effectively address capacity shortfalls and alleviate voltage issues in those areas, respectively.
If approved by the CPUC, the first of PG&E's proposed projects is scheduled to come on-line by the end of 2019, with the other projects scheduled to come on-line by the end of 2020. For details on the four proposed projects, please refer to the table below.
Vistra Energy announced the same day that it had been selected for the 300-megawatt/1,200-megawatt-hour battery energy storage project at the natural gas-fired Moss Landing Power Plant site. Pending approval, Vistra anticipates the battery storage project will enter commercial operations by the fourth quarter of 2020.
In July, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) released a decision on a related question about rate-based DERs: It authorized Southern California Edison (SCE) to recover in customer rates the cost of contracts for a range of DER investments. The CPUC’S decision on the PG&E request was expected within 90 days.
Earlier in June, in an investor presentation, Vistra Energy announced that it plans to add a 10 MW / 42 MWh lithium-ion battery to its 180 MW-AC Upton County Solar 2 solar power plant in Texas, as reported by PV Magazine reported June 18. The recently-built solar facility is the largest in the state, and the battery addition would be the state’s largest electric power storage unit. The project is scheduled to come online in Q4 2018.