Dive Brief:
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San Diego Gas & Electric has signed contracts for five battery storage projects totaling 83.5 MW, part of its efforts to meet California's energy storage mandate.
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Two of the five lithium-ion facilities — 30 MW and 40 MW, respectively — will be owned by SDG&E, which will use them to enhance regional energy reliability while maximizing renewable energy use.
- The other three storage projects, totaling 13.5 MW, will be owned separately by Powin Energy, Enel Green Power North America, and by Advanced Microgrid Solutions and constructed in Escondido, Poway and San Juan Capistrano, respectively.
Dive Insight:
California in 2013 passed the nation’s first energy storage mandate, which called for investor owned utilities to buy 1.325 GW of storage by 2020.
Last year, SDG&E and Southern California Edison began fast-tracking storage projects in response to the Aliso Canyon methane leak, which curtailed gas supplies to generators in the Los Angeles basin. The utilities deployed a number of long duration batteries, including the world's largest lithium-ion facility to date, a 120 MWh facility in Escondido.
SDG&E will deploy two more batteries of at least that size to help meet its 165 MW share of the energy storage mandate, the utility announced Thursday.
Renewable Energy Systems will construct a 30 MW, 120 MWh facility in Miramar, and AES will construct a 40 MW, 160 MWh facility.
SDG&E will own those two large batteries, while third parties will own the three smaller facilities totaling 13.5 MW. The facilities are expected to come online between December 2019 and late 2021, and will each have a four-hour duration, like the larger projects.
The utility also signed a contract for 4.5 MW of demand response from industrial customers through OhmConnect.
If the contracts are approved by the California Public Utilities Commission construction on the storage projects is expected to begin within the next 18 months.
“These projects will add more flexibility to the system and help us to ensure reliability while providing greater levels of clean energy to all of our local communities,” Emily Shults, SDG&E’s vice president of energy procurement, said in a statement.
This post has been updated to reflect duration (MWh) statistics for the SDG&E battery projects.