AES Indiana, a subsidiary of US utility AES Corporation, has started commercial operations at a 250MW solar-plus-storage plant in Pike County, Indiana, US.
The Petersburg Energy Center was part of the utility’s 2022 Integrated Resource Plan, to fill the gap with the retirement of its coal-fired plant, Petersburg Units 1 and 2.
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More than 515,000 solar panels were installed at the project site, which is paired with a 180MWh battery energy storage system (BESS). The project was acquired back in 2021 from a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources.
This is not the first renewables project the utility has commissioned in Pike County, as last year it powered a 200MW/800MWh standalone BESS, as covered by our sister-site Energy-storage.news. The Pike County BESS project was built on AES Indiana’s former coal-fired plant, the Petersburg Generating Station.
Brandi Davis-Handy, president of AES Indiana, said: “Both AES Indiana and leaders in Pike County have a shared vision of accelerating the future of energy for Indiana which is why we’ve committed US$1.1 billion in investments in this community from 2024 through this year.”
Utility-scale solar projects, such as AES Indiana’s, have been driving the growth of solar PV in the state of Indiana in the past few years. Last year alone, more than 2GW of utility-scale solar PV was installed in the state, the third-most among the US states, according to trade body the the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).
Cumulatively, Indiana has nearly 6GW of installed solar PV and is forecast to add a further 17GW over the next five years, again ranked third by the SEIA.
