Salt River Project (SRP) in Arizona has signed contracts with Plus Power for two battery storage systems totaling 340 megawatts (MW) that are expected to be online early in the summer of 2024.
The Sierra Estrella battery project will be a 250-MW, four-hour battery storage system in Avondale. The Superstition project is designed as a 90-MW, four-hour battery storage system in Gilbert.
SRP said it would have dispatch control of the storage systems, which will give the public power utility the ability to decide at what point each day it will deploy the energy output from each system onto its grid. SRP said deployment would typically occur during times of peak energy demand, usually in the early evening when demand for electric power is high and renewable resources are not available.
"These early deployments will help both SRP and the industry gain experience with this technology, which will play a major role in reducing carbon emissions,” Kelly Barr, SRP’s chief strategy, corporate services and sustainability executive, said in a statement.
SRP selected the two grid-charged battery projects from its most recent all-source request for proposals process. Both projects will be owned and operated by a subsidiary of Houston-based Plus Power.
SRP said the two planned projects push its total commitment to battery storage to 800 MW by 2024 and represent over 10 percent of the utility’s anticipated peak electric demand in 2024.
SRP is also developing the Sonoran Energy Center, an approximately 250-MW system with the solar array charging a 1,000-megawatt hour energy storage system, that is sited in Little Rainbow Valley, south of Buckeye. SRP has also contracted for the 88-MW Storey solar and battery storage project near Coolidge and plans to add a battery to the Saint Solar project, which is also near Coolidge. All three projects are scheduled to enter service in 2023.
In 2021, SRP brought a 25-MW battery storage facility at its Bolster substation in Peoria online.
