Blackstone Credit & Insurance, the newest business division of global asset manager Blackstone, has closed financing for a large-scale battery storage project in California, US, with developer Arevon.
The two companies said this morning (13 February) that financial close had been achieved by raising US$350 million through preferred equity and debt financing, along with an investment tax credit (ITC) transfer.
The funding will enable the completion of the 200MW/800MWh Condor Energy Storage Project. Located in Grand Terrace in California’s San Bernadino County, the system is expected to begin commercial operations in the second quarter of this year.
Southern California Edison (SCE), one of California’s three main investor-owned utilities, signed a 15-year contract for resource adequacy (RA) with the project owners in 2022 after receiving the necessary Large Generator Interconnection Approvals from the California grid and wholesale market operator CAISO in January of that year.
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According to an initial progress report filed by renewable energy project owner-operator Arevon in April of 2022 with the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), the standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) facility is located on around 10 acres of land.
It will connect to SCE’s 115kV Highgrove substation. At that time, the planned in-service date under the interconnection agreement was 31 December 2023, with a commercial operations date for the end of this month (28 February 2024).
The project’s BESS is being supplied by Tesla, using the company’s Megapack 2XL battery storage solution. The Megapack, which comes with 3.9MWh capacity and 1.9MW power output as standard, has been the driving force behind increasing stationary storage deployments for the electric vehicle (EV), battery and software company.
Tesla will also carry out operations and maintenance (O&M) duties on the Condor BESS, while electrical contractor Rosendin Electric is responsible for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and Arevon will own and operate the project in the market.
Condor will provide firming capacity, enhance reliability and stability of the grid and increase SCE’s ability to integrate growing shares of renewables, adding to the resource pool of around 7GW of large-scale battery storage systems CAISO can call upon.
Read more detailed coverage of the transferability aspect of the deal, along with commentary from tax credit ecosystem Crux, in our separate article here (Premium access).
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