EDF Renewables North America has begun operations on a 375MW/600MWh solar-plus-storage project in California.
The company announced last week (31st January) that the Desert Quartzite project in Riverside County, California, began operations in December 2024. EDF Renewables – a regional subsidiary of French energy giant EDF – did not specify the suppliers of the solar or storage elements of the project. The battery energy storage system (BESS) is a 4-hour, 150MW installation.
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Solar projects in California are increasingly paired with energy storage to adapt to the state’s grid and energy mix. The “duck curve” – where solar generation peaks in the day and pushes power prices to near or below zero before it drops off when demand spikes in the evening – has made energy storage essential to balancing supply and demand across California.
“EDF Renewables recognises the growing importance of battery energy storage systems as a complementary market to our core generation business. These systems provide reliable, affordable, and clean energy even in the absence of sunlight,” said Devon Muto, vice president of west development at EDF Renewables.
A number of major project developers including EDP Renewables and Arevon have invested vast amounts in large-scale solar-plus-storage projects across California, to the extent that EDP Renewables North America CEO, Sandhya Ganapathy, told PV Tech that the “low hanging fruit” for solar developers was gone across major US markets. She said that companies would need to innovate, either in technology or geography, to be competitive.
Federal Land deployment
Desert Quartzite was built on Federal Land managed by the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which is part of the Department of the Interior (DOI). The BLM manages millions of acres of land, largely across the western US, much of which it has proposed for renewable energy development.
Its Western Solar Plan, which has been updated since its introduction in 2012, aims to increase the permitting and deployment of solar projects on Federal land with a focus on brownfield land or areas close to existing transmission infrastructure. In August the BLM released proposals for 31 million acres of land it said was suitable for solar PV deployments.
President Donald Trump has said he wants to slash regulations on Federal projects, particularly for new oil and gas drilling projects. His nominee for the DOI, Doug Burgum, has said that boosting energy project deployments is key to US national security, according to Reuters.
The first two weeks of the new administration has not offered much clarity for the future of the US solar market. Read more on this here.
