US independent power producer (IPP) Broad Reach Power has placed an order for battery energy storage system (BESS) equipment with Chinese company SYL Battery for a grid-scale project in California.
Broad Reach Power is purchasing 188MWh of equipment from SYL to install at the 25MW / 100MWh nameplate output and capacity Cascade BESS project in Stockton, California. The IPP acquired Cascade from a subsidiary of Enel Group in November 2020, marking its entry into the California energy storage market.
The deal with SYL Battery, a vendor of stationary storage battery cells, packs, communications interfaces as well as whole system solutions headquartered in China’s Zhejiang Province, is a master procurement agreement that Broad Reach Power said will enable expedited procurement for a multi-year project pipeline at gigawatt-hour scale.
SYL was established in 2018 and is a subsidiary of major Tier-1 solar PV module manufacturer Risen Energy.
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Broad Reach Power already ordered 47MWh of equipment from SYL for another California project, Sierra Energy Storage in Jamestown. The 10MW / 40MWh Sierra project and Cascade were among three BESS developments that Enel submitted in response to a procurement by California investor-owned utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) in 2017.
Enel won 85MW out of a total 165MW that PG&E procured in that round, and Sierra and Cascade both have 20-year long-term off-take agreements in place with the utility, aimed at helping PG&E and California to meet its peak energy demand, which it finds particularly challenging in summer months each year.
Grid operator CAISO said a few months ago that it anticipates the deployment of 1,493MW of battery storage on its grid by the end of the third quarter of this year, which will mitigate but not eliminate that serious potential shortfall in energy. Cascade is scheduled to come online by next summer.
Broad Reach Power, which was only established in 2019, already has a 3GW portfolio of utility-scale solar and energy storage in six US states. The company came to prominence last year with the announcement and subsequent rapid buildout of about 10 projects in Texas’ ERCOT market of around 10MW each, before then moving on to a couple of 100MW projects in the state.
In August, Energy-Storage.news reported that Broad Reach placed a 1,000MW equipment order with leading Chinese PV inverter company and latterly energy storage system integrator and provider Sungrow for projects in Texas.
“Our continued investment in high-quality energy storage equipment will help ensure the reliability and transformation of the grid for years to come,” Broad Reach Power senior VP of corporate development Justin Amirault said.
“Broad Reach carefully selects equipment vendors based on a wide range of criteria including performance, reliability and ethical supply chain management, among others. SYL has a proven track record in the space that meets Broad Reach’s high standards and will allow Cascade to enhance grid reliability for the long term.”
