EDF energizes 150 MW/600 MWh of energy storage at Californian solar site

Desert Quartzite, a utility-scale solar-plus-storage project in Riverside County, California, is operational.
The project, which features 300 MW of solar generation capacity and 150 MW/600 MWh of energy storage mostly on federal BLM territory, was approved by the government body in January 2020 and represents a $1 billion investment that created more than 450 construction jobs. Desert Quartzite was initially developed by First Solar, in 2019 but was sold to EDF Renewables in 2020, according to BLM documents.
In September 2021, community choice aggregator Clean Power Associates signed a 15-year power purchase agreement to buy electricity from Desert Quartzite.
The utility-scale project is expected to generate enough power to meet the consumption needs of more than 163,000 typical Californian homes – the equivalent of avoiding more than 669,000 metric tons of annual carbon emissions.
The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land, mainly in 12 western US states, including Alaska. The BLM has permitted clean energy projects with a total capacity of more than 33 GW, enough to power around 15 million homes and including solar, wind, and geothermal sites as well as electricity lines on public land that are essential for connecting clean energy projects to the grid.
The BLM also issued a final Renewable Energy Rule to reduce consumer energy costs and the expense of developing solar and wind power projects, improve project application processes, create jobs, and incentivize developers to continue responsibly developing renewables projects on public land.
EDF Renewables’ North American portfolio consists of 18 GW of developed projects and 14.6 GW of sites under service contracts.
From pv magazine USA.