Even if it’s part of an effort to meet a state-mandated goal, the 165 MW in energy-storage commitments Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has made is an impressive one-swoop number.
On Monday, the California utility submitted six energy storage contracts to the California Public Utilities Commission for approval as part of its efforts to meet the state-mandated goal of adding 580 MW of storage by 2020. If these contracts are approved, PG&E will have already reached 42% of its energy-storage goal.
The utility said it believes around 33% of its retail electric deliveries will be from renewable sources by the end of the year.
While the flashiest name on the list of companies that were awarded contracts was Tesla, more than half of the projects – 51% – went to Enel Green Power or a subsidiary. EDF Renewable Energy won the only contract – 10 MW – for behind-the-retail-meter storage. The other five contracts were on the utility side of the meter.
Martin Wyspianski , PG&E senior director for energy portfolio procurement and policy, said he was pleased with the progress PG&E has made toward meeting California’s renewable energy and storage goals.
“As our clean energy portfolio grows, so does the importance of storage technology,” Wyspianski said. “These contracts and the storage capacity they represent will help us better integrate our growing renewable generation sources, and bring increased reliability to the grid. They are an important milestone in our progress toward a clean energy future.”
The first of the six projects, all of which are lithium-ion battery systems, will come online in November 2020. All the storage projects must be operational by 2024 and range in capacity from 1 MW to 50 MW each.
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