Watch: Enel activates 181 MW solar, 55 MW storage in Texas

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Enel Green Power North America reached commercial operation date for its 181 MW solar, 55 MW / 75 MWh battery energy storage project east of Dallas, Texas. 

The project, dubbed Lily solar + storage, marks Enel’s first co-located solar and storage facility in North America. The 55 MW of battery capacity is part of a planned 600 MW pipeline of energy storage to be added to the Texas ERCOT grid by 2022.

The project consists of 421,400 bifacial PV modules, and 12,444 batteries. It is estimated the project will abate annual emissions of over 242,000 tons of carbon dioxide.

“By pairing renewable energy with storage technology, we are supporting a cleaner and more flexible grid,” said Paolo Romanacci, Head of Enel Green Power in the US and Canada.

As storms this February caused massive outages in Texas, there is increasing demand for bolstering the grid, adding extreme weather resilience, and integrating energy storage.

In March, a Colorado-based grid analysis firm Vibrant Clean Energy released a whitepaper that modeled the impact of energy storage on reliability. It found that in a “high renewables” attachment rate to the grid, about 40,000 MW of storage would have met all February blackout requirements in the state “with room to spare.”

Enel said it plans several more hybrid co-located renewables plus storage projects in the state. It also plans to add 57 MW energy storage systems to its 500 MW High Lonesome wind field and 497 MW Roadrunner solar facility. The company said it plans a growth strategy of 6.5 GW of renewables and 1.4 GW of storage capacity by the end of 2024 as part of an $8 billion growth plan revealed in November.

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