The California Public Utilities Commission has authorised San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) to build three new energy storage facilities totalling 161MW/644 megawatt-hours.
The facilities will help provide the US state with greater capacity to meet high energy demand on summer days and at night after solar power dissipates.
SDG&E will own and operate the plants, which will be connected to the state energy market.
This will mean that the California Independent System Operator will be able to dispatch them any time they are needed to balance demand and supply on the grid statewide.
The trio are slated to be completed in late 2022 or early 2023.
SDG&E vice president of energy innovation Miguel Romero said: “Investing in advanced technologies like energy storage is critical to advancing our state and region’s aggressive climate goals, including getting to net zero greenhouse gas emissions, with the added benefit of making the energy grid more resilient.
“Project by project, step by step, we are making progress toward a cleaner, safer and more reliable energy future.”