Energy technology company Wärtsilä is supplying 500MW/2,000MWh of battery energy storage systems (BESS) to PV projects operated by Clearway Energy Group in Hawaii and California, US.
The contracts cover three sites in California and two in Hawaii, all being operated or developed by renewable energy developer Clearway. The projects are all four-hour systems at different stages of development, with two set to come online this year.
Wärtsilä will supply its GridSolv Quantum BESS solution which will be controlled by its energy management system (EMS), the GEMS Digital Energy Platform. Gridsolv uses lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.
In California, Wärtsilä has started construction on BESS units totalling 275MW/1.1GWh to adjoin the Daggett 2 and Daggett 3 projects in San Bernadino, California. The two total 482MWac of PV and are adjacent to the site of a retired coal and natural gas plant. The orders were booked in Q3/Q4 2021 and will be completed in 2023.
“We’re very proud of these deals and our relationship with Clearway, which has recently chosen us for their largest projects,” Wärtsilä’s VP energy storage and optimisation Andy Tang told Energy-Storage.news.
“The California projects will be doing load shifting through merchant market participation and resource adequacy (RA),” he added.
Resource adequacy is the framework through which the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) ensures there is enough supply of electricity to meet demand, with an extra reserve margin. It is the main way BESS projects in the state garner revenues and has driven four-hour durations to become the market standard.
Construction began on the Daggett solar-plus-storage projects in November last year but it is only now that Wärtsilä has been revealed as the BESS solution provider. The two projects together have been described as California’s hybrid renewables-plus-storage project by Clearway.
The third California project Wärtsilä is delivering is adjoining an already-operational solar PV farm, the 192 MWac Rosamond Central facility in Kern County, California. The order for 147MW/588MWh of energy storage has been booked to Wärtsilä’s order intake for July and construction is expected to be completed in December 2023.
In Hawaii, Wärtsilä is set to finalise construction this year on two projects totalling 75MW/300MWh of energy storage to be installed at Clearway’s ‘Mililani I Solar’ and ‘Waiawa Solar Power’ project developments. Completion of the solar PV, totalling 75MWac, is also expected this year. Once complete, Clearway will have five solar projects totaling 185 MW in the island state.
Tang said that the Hawaii storage projects are purely doing solar load shifting. Hawaii is aiming for 100% renewables by 2045.
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