The board of directors for California community choice aggregator (CCA) Valley Clean Energy (VCE) on March 1 approved a 20-year agreement to purchase the output from the Resurgence Solar I project currently under development in San Bernardino County by a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, LLC.
VCE is the local electric generation provider for Davis, Woodland, Winters and unincorporated Yolo County.
The total capacity of the solar photovoltaic project is 90 megawatts (MW) of power and 75 MW of battery energy storage.
The contract includes two innovative extras, paid for by a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources and distributed over a 10-year period: a $200,000 contribution to a workforce development fund and a $100,000 donation to a local sustainability fund, according to VCE.
In California, NextEra Energy Resources owns and operates wind, solar and battery energy storage facilities and transmission assets in 20 counties.
The company has long-term agreements for solar, storage and wind with a half-dozen CCAs: Central Coast Community Energy, CleanPowerSF, Clean Power Alliance of Southern California, Marin Clean Energy, Silicon Valley Clean Energy and Sonoma Clean Power Authority.
VCE said the Resurgence Solar I project is an example of responsible development and reinvestment in a brownfield solar thermal project. The project at Kramer Junction in San Bernardino County, which was purchased by a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources in 2005, operated from 1986 until it was decommissioned in 2019.
Through the contract with VCE, NextEra Energy Resources will construct Resurgence Solar on the existing site.
The project will require a conditional use permit from San Bernardino County and an approved decommissioning plan from the California Energy Commission, said Gordon Samuel, VCE’s assistant general manager and director of power resources.
