The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) said it has increased its contracted solar capacity by 60% since October 2020, according to a company release.
The company’s Green Invest program and 2020 Request for Proposals for solar capacity have resulted in the addition of 964 MW of contracted solar and 130 MW of battery storage to the TVA system, pending environmental review.
Driving the additional capacity has been Green Invest program commitments from the Knoxville Utilities Board, and Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Vanderbilt University, through a partnership with Nashville Electric Service.
The company said that more commitments will be announced in the coming months.
In total, TVA said it plans to have more than 2 GW of solar operating by the end of 2023, expanding that to 7 to 10 GW of solar energy by 2040. To help meet those goals, TVA said it plans to issue a new request for proposals for additional renewable energy this spring.
The announcement comes a week after TVA approved a new rate structure that allows power companies that buy electricity from it to charge monthly fixed fees on residential solar customers.
Relatively little distributed solar capacity exists across TVA’s system, and instituting fees that target only distributed solar customers are seen by some as an effort to keep it that way.
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Wow, so ambitious – growing from maybe 2GW to maybe 10GW in 17 years. That is a whole 470MW a year! What a future-looking organization!