US renewable energy company RWE Clean Energy has acquired 400MW of Solar PV and 199MW of standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) assets from Galehead Development.
The capacity is spread across three sites in the states of New York, Idaho and Oregon. Financial details of the acquisitions were not disclosed. Galehead Development, which sold the assets to RWE, is a greenfield development platform for solar PV, energy storage and wind power projects.
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The largest of the sites is the 300MWac Cedar Ridge solar PV project in Blaine County, Idaho, co-located with a 150MW/600MWh four-hour duration BESS. This asset is located within the PacifiCorp region and will “provide regional grid support consistent with PacifiCorp’s resource planning forecasts”, RWE said.
In its 2023 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), Pacificorp – which operates in the Western US – said that it intends to have installed 20GW worth of solar and wind capacity across its markets by 2032.
RWE also acquired the 199MW/796 MWh four-hour duration Remington BESS in Marion County, Oregon. Both Cedar Ridge and Remington expand RWE’s existing footprint in the Pacific Northwest of the US.
Hanson Wood, head of development for utility-scale renewables at RWE Clean Energy said: “RWE is excited to close on our first acquisitions with Galehead, in particular the Remington and Cedar Ridge projects which allow us to expand our presence in the Pacific Northwest market where there is robust demand for low-cost, clean power.”
The smallest of the three assets RWE acquired is the 100MWac Champlain solar project in Washington County, New York, where RWE said that there is growing electricity demand. The site is in the mid-stages of development, though the company did not confirm when it is expected online.
RWE is the US renewables project subsidiary of German energy company RWE Group and was formerly known as Con Edison Clean Energy. The parent company saw its global earnings from solar and wind assets increase significantly last year compared with 2022, rising to around US$1.35 billion. This is largely due to the acquisition of Con Edison (as it was then known) in the US in March 2023, which came with a 24GW project pipeline of solar, storage and wind assets.
In November 2023, RWE Group announced a plan to invest an eye-watering €55 billion (US$60 billion) into its global renewables portfolio through 2030 with a view to adding another 65GW of capacity.
