California community choice aggregators sign PPAs for 150 MW of solar, 180 MWh of storage

Canada’s Recurrent Energy said Tuesday it has signed two 15-year power purchase agreements with two California community choice aggregators, or CCAs, to supply a total of 150 MW of solar power from a utility-scale facility that will be built with 180 MWh of battery storage attached.

Power will be supplied from Recurrent Energy’s Slate photovoltaic-plus-storage project to be built in Kings County, California. The project is scheduled to reach commercial operation in 2021, Recurrent said. Approximately 55% of the power represented in the contracts will go to Silicon Valley Clean Energy, while 45% will go to Monterey Bay Community Power.

“This first-of-its-kind partnership resulted from a joint procurement process that Silicon Valley Clean Energy and Monterey Bay Community Power launched in September 2017 to source cost-effective, renewable power for their respective communities,” the CCAs said in a statement.

The Slate project, to be located near the town of Lemoore, will have a 45-MW lithium-ion battery of four hours duration giving it 180 MWh of energy capacity, Recurrent said.

“With the integrated storage component, both CCAs will have the flexibility to fill the battery when wholesale energy prices are low and then discharge the energy when prices are higher to meet their unique load requirements in a cost-competitive manner,” said Shawn Qu, chairman and chief executive officer of Canadian Solar, the parent company of Recurrent Energy.

Qu said the project will provide “a landmark amount of energy storage for the state of California as well.”

In the second quarter of 2018, Silicon Valley Energy Authority, based in San Jose, California, bought the most power of any of the 16 active CCAs in California. It bought 1.65 million MWh out of a total of 7.2 million MWh reported sold to the CCAs.

In Q2 2018, Silicon Valley’s biggest supplier was Morgan Stanley, which supplied the CCA with 543,042 MWh, or roughly a third of its total, according to data filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission..

Monterey Bay Community Power, based in Monterey, California, was the second most active power buyer in Q2. It bought 1.47 million MWh, with The Energy Authority supplying 600,029 MWh of its total.

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