The California Public Utilities Commission has approved five planned power purchase agreements for battery energy storage systems by Southern California Edison (SCE), with a portfolio of energy storage projects with a combined installed capacity of 497MW expected to come online within the next two years.
In a statement, the California Public Utilities Commission said deploying energy storage will bring the state closer to its goal of ensuring that it can meet electricity demand in the summer of 2023 and 2024. State energy officials have been concerned that the state could face power shortages for years to come.
Meanwhile, the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development recently announced that California policymakers also want $8 billion in available funding from the U.S. Federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to create an environmentally and economically sustainable and sustainable Expanded Renewable Hydrogen Center.
The California Department of Energy is committed to supporting the grid against broader threats to grid reliability, including declining power generation due to a prolonged drought, surging demand caused by heat waves and the impact of wildfires on the power system.
The state is also facing challenges in obtaining solar panels due to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s anti-dumping circumvention investigations on solar panels from certain countries, as well as supply chain challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic. California Governor Gavin Newsom, D, has allocated $8 billion in his revised budget proposal to improve grid reliability and economics, of which $5.2 billion will go to a strategy to create a 5GW long-duration energy storage system for power reliability reserve.
In the longer term, the California government is preparing for the planned retirement of the 2.2GW Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, as well as several natural gas power plants. Last summer, the California Public Utilities Commission asked the state's power providers to procure 11.5GW of energy storage between 2023 and 2026, including 2GW for delivery by 2023 and 6GW for delivery by 2024, respectively. system.
Southern California Edison (SCE) submitted a proposal to the California Public Utilities Commission in March seeking approval to procure power from storage projects with a combined capacity of 497MW to meet its share of the required energy storage resources. The contracts approved by the California Public Utilities Commission include the deployment of new projects and the expansion of existing battery storage systems, including Southern California Edison (SCE) signed a purchase agreement with AES for an 82MW energy storage system, signed with Calpine The 40MW energy storage system purchase agreement and the 75MW energy storage system purchase agreement signed with LS Power.
