TotalEnergies has started commercial operations of a 380MW solar farm in the US.
Located south of Houston, Texas, Myrtle solar farm is co-located with a battery storage plant with an energy capacity of 225 megawatt hours.
The solar farm comprises 705,000 ground-mounted photovoltaic panels installed over an area equivalent to 1800 American football fields.
Some 70% of Myrtle’s capacity will supply electricity to TotalEnergies’ industrial plants in the US Gulf Coast region.
It is part of the company’s “Go Green” Project, which will enable the TotalEnergies to cover, by 2025, the power needs and curtail the Scope 1+2 emissions of its industrial sites in Port Arthur and La Porte in Texas, and Carville in Louisiana.
The remaining 30% of Myrtle’s capacity will supply green electricity to Kilroy Realty, a publicly traded real estate company, under a 15-year corporate power purchase agreement (CPPA) indexed on merchant prices.
TotalEnergies’ affiliate Saft supplied the batteries for the energy storage system.
The Myrtle project, which benefits from the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) Tax Credit mechanisms, will positively contribute to TotalEnergies’ Integrated Power’s profitability target of 12%.
“We are very proud to start up Myrtle, TotalEnergies’ largest-to-date operated utility-scale solar farm with storage in the United States.
“This startup is another milestone in achieving our goal to build an integrated and profitable position in Texas, where ERCOT is the main electrical grid operator.
“Besides, the project will enable the company to cover the power needs of some of its biggest US industrial sites with electricity from a renewable source,” said Vincent Stoquart, Senior Vice President, Renewables at TotalEnergies.