The Planning and Development Services Department of Imperial County, California, has prepared initial environmental assessment documents for a 800MW hybrid solar and BESS facility proposed by developer RAI Energy.
In line with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review process, officials at Imperial County have filed an initial study (IS), along with a notice of preparation (NOP), of its intentions to carry out a full environmental impact report (EIR), after it found that RAI Energy’s Wildcat Energy Farm could have a significant impact on the surrounding area.
A review period for the public and interested stakeholders to submit comments on the developer’s plans opened on 12 November, 2024 and closes on 23 December, 2024. As disclosed in the environmental documents, RAI Energy is seeking county approval of a zone change, general plan amendment and two conditional use permits (CUPs) in order to commence construction on the project.
Although the developer wasn’t named within the environmental documents, the mailing address associated with the project subsidiary – Wildcat Energy Farm, LLC – matches that of RAI Energy’s corporate headquarters.
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800MW/3,200MWh BESS co-located with solar across 5,900 acres
According to the environmental permitting documents, the Wildcat Energy Farm will pair a 800MW/3,200MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) with a 800MW solar farm across 5,900 acres of privately-owned, vacant land immediately south of the community of Salton City transecting State Route (SR) 86 in Imperial County, California.
Although specific providers weren’t mentioned, RAI Energy said that it will use lithium-ion or flow technology for the 800MW BESS that will be positioned in the north central portion of the project site.
The documents state that electricity produced and stored by the Wildcat Energy Farm “could be sold under the terms of a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA)”, suggesting that RAI Energy has yet to secure an offtake agreement for the project.
The projected life of the project is between 25 and 30 years.
Connecting to Imperial Irrigation District’s grid
The project is expected to connect to Imperial Irrigation District’s (IID’s) “L” 161kV transmission line. IID is one of eight balancing authorities in California responsible for maintaining the supply and demand of electricity for over 145,000 customers in Imperial Valley and parts of San Diego and Riverside counties.
On 23 September, 2024, the customer-owned utility announced that it had surpassed its record electricity demand by 25MW on the afternoon of 5 September, 2024.
IID has a number of renewable offtake agreements in place including one with New York-based investment firm Greenbacker Capital Management. Under a 20-year Energy Storage System Power Purchase Tolling Agreement, IID has access to Greenbacker’s 30MW/120MWh Holtville BESS project located in Imperial County.
As reported by Energy-Storage.news, Greenbacker acquired the development from Suncode Energy last year. The project was placed into commercial operations on 5 September 2024, coinciding with the day IID experienced its record peak electricity demand.
Ceremony for Arevon Energy’s Vikings Energy Farm
Also in Imperial County, California, a ribbon cutting ceremony was held on 20 November 2024 to celebrate commercial operations of Arevon Energy’s Vikings Energy Farm that co-locates a 157MW solar farm with a 150MW/600MWh lithium-ion BESS at an estimated cost of US$529 million.
RAI Energy completed initial project development of the Vikings Energy Farm, securing an offtake agreement for the project with California community choice aggregator (CCA) San Diego Community Power (SDCP) in 2021, before ownership of the project was transferred to Arevon Energy at notice-to-proceed (NTP) in 2022. Arevon then claimed it had secured one of the first investment tax credit (ITC) transferability transactions for the project in late 2023.
According to SDCP’s August Board of Directors meeting, the storage portion of the Vikings project was brought online in August 2024 after a lengthy delay. The BESS was originally due online last June, but was hampered by Covid-19 and supply-chain procurement issues.
SOLV Energy was the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor for the project and Tesla provided its Megapacks for the BESS.
RAI Energy 2WGh hybrid solar BESS project
Elsewhere in the US, RAI Energy is also proposing to construct a 500MW solar farm co-located with a 500MW/2,000MWh BESS project encompassing 2,896 acres in Morgan County, Colorado, as recently covered by Energy-Storage.news.
RAI Energy was formed in 2016 for the development of utility-scale solar and storage projects in the western US, and claims it will have a solar and storage portfolio exceeding 2GW by 2026.
