Canadian Solar subsidiary Recurrent Energy is to supply Silicon Valley Clean Energy and Monterey Bay Community Power with electricity from a 150MW solar farm combined with 45MW of energy storage in California.
The facility, located in Kings County, will start commercial operations in 2021 and deliver 55% of its output to Silicon Valley Clean Energy and 45% to Monterey Bay through two 15-year power purchase agreements.
The contracts have been signed following a joint procurement process launched by Silicon Valley Clean Energy and Monterey Bay Community Power in September 2017.
Lithium-ion batteries will enable four hours of flexible energy delivery for the project.
Silicon Valley Clean Energy chief executive Girish Balachandran said: “As a community choice aggregator, we are proud to help California lead the transition to clean, reliable and flexible energy.
“We are proud to partner on a new renewable energy project that makes a significant investment to reach our state’s carbon-free energy goals and contribute to solving the state’s grid integration problem by investing in large grid-scale energy storage.”
Monterey Bay Community Power chief executive Tom Habashi said: “Joining forces in this process with Silicon Valley Clean Energy and Recurrent Energy has been invaluable, as we bring onto the grid the clean electricity that we know our customers desire.”
Canadian Solar chief executive Shawn Qu said: “With the integrated storage component, both CCAs will have the flexibility to fill the battery when wholesale energy prices are low and then discharge the energy when prices are higher to meet their unique load requirements in a cost-competitive manner.
“Recurrent Energy was the first developer to close financing for a utility-scale solar project with CCA off-takers and we will leverage this expertise to ensure the project is successful.”