Arizona public power utility Salt River Project on Nov. 14 announced investments in two new solar energy plus battery storage plants.
The Sonoran Energy Center will be an approximately 250-megawatt system with the solar array charging a 1 gigawatt-hour energy storage system and will be built in Little Rainbow Valley, south of Buckeye, Ariz.
The Storey Energy Center will be an approximately 88-MW solar and energy storage system and is scheduled to be built south of Coolidge.
SRP said the Sonoran Energy Center will be the largest solar-charged battery project in the state and with the addition of the two projects will make SRP one of the largest investors in energy storage in the nation.
The projects were chosen as the result of an open "All-Source" solicitation for resources and will help serve SRP's summer peak load.
Both projects are scheduled to be online by June 2023 and will be owned and operated by subsidiaries of NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, a subsidiary of Florida-based, investor-owned NextEra Energy.
SRP said the Sonoran Energy Center and Storey Energy Center porjects will contribute to SRP’s goal of adding 1,000 MW of new utility-scale, solar energy to its system by the end of fiscal year 2025.
They will also contribute to SRP's 2035 goal to reduce the amount of generation carbon emissions per megawatt-hour by more than 60 percent and by 90 percent in 2050.
Other SRP storage projects
SRP has already pursued other storage projects.
SRP and NextEra Energy Resources in 2018 announced the opening of Pinal Central Solar Energy Center, a universal-scale, integrated solar plant equipped with a battery system.
The 20-MW solar photovoltaic generation facility is paired with a state-of-the-art, 10-MW lithium-ion battery storage system.
Also in 2018, SRP announced contract execution and the start of construction with the AES Corporation for SRP’s first standalone battery-based energy storage project.
On the residential side, SRP last year initiated a program to support the installation and use of battery storage systems for its residential customers.
