Utility Puget Sound Energy has signed contracts for a solar PV project developed by Qcells and a standalone battery storage project from Brightnight and Cordelio Power in Washington, US.
Puget Sound Energy (PSE), which serves 1.1 million electricity customers and about 800,000 gas customers in the Pacific Northwest state, announced on Tuesday (24 September) that it would add the two new assets to its resource mix.
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The utility said it will own and operate Appaloosa Solar Project, a 124MW PV plant to be constructed within the footprint of an existing 342.7MW PSE-owned wind farm, Lower Snake River Wind Facility, in Garfield County, WA.
Puget Sound Energy also announced that it has signed a contract for energy and grid services from Greenwater Storage Project, a 200MW/800MWh standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) in Pierce County. It is under development through a joint venture between developer Brightnight and independent power producer (IPP) Cordelio Power.
The US subsidiary of vertically integrated solar PV and energy solutions company Qcells will deliver the standalone solar project under a fully wrapped contract. This includes developing Appaloosa Solar Project, providing PV modules and acting as engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor.
The manufacturer, part of South Korea’s Hanwha Group, is currently on an aggressive ramp-up of its US-based production lines. It currently operates a module plant in Dalton, Georgia, with a 5.1GW annual production capacity, and a solar encapsulant plant, also in Georgia.
Qcells received a conditional loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy (DOE) worth US$1.45 billion at the beginning of August for its vertically integrated PV plant in Georgia. The vertically integrated facility would have 3.3GW annual production capacity for silicon ingots, wafers, cells and modules. It is being developed in Cartersville, in Bartow County where the encapsulant plant is also situated.
In terms of recent US projects, Qcells commissioned a 50MW solar-plus-storage system with a 200MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) for social media and software giant Meta in California earlier this summer.
Puget Sound Energy senior VP of resources Ron Roberts said the Appaloosa Solar Project—not to be confused with a project called Appaloosa Solar 1 in Utah—would especially benefit the utility in meeting summer peak demand while contributing to Washington’s clean energy goals, which include 100% greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions-free electricity by 2045.
PSE launched its most recent Request for Proposals (RFP) for eligible energy generation and storage resources in July this year, including up to 2.3 million annual megawatt-hours of energy compliant with Washington’s Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA) along with 1,755MW of summer peak and 1,573MW of winter peak capacity.
To read the full version of this story, visit Energy-Storage.news.
