Ormat Technologies, Wärtsilä and Canadian Solar features in this round of news in brief.
Ormat signs 15-year contract with California community choice aggregator
Geothermal energy specialist Ormat has signed a long-term agreement for a grid-scale battery storage project in California, US, with community energy supplier San Diego Community Power (SDCP).
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Ormat Technologies said this week (12 December) that it has signed a 15-year energy storage service agreement (ESSA) with SDCP for its Pomona 2 battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Los Angeles.
Ormat is best known as a renewable energy developer working on geothermal projects, but opened an energy storage division in 2020, targeting growth opportunities in the sector and setting itself a target to deploy 500MW by 2025.
Pomona 2 is a 20MW/40MWh asset which went online in July. Ormat CEO Doron Blachar said the long-term contract would “help to balance our merchant portfolio and support more stable and profitable revenues for the storage segment,” describing energy storage as a “ unique, multi-year growth sector”.
SDCP is one of California’s community choice aggregator (CCA) non-profit energy suppliers. Ormat has in place a number of similar contracts for storage projects with CCAs, including another signed with SDCP a few months ago.
In September Ormat Technologies signed a multi-year supply deal with battery manufacturer Gotion High-Tech which was linked to the price of key raw material lithium carbonate, for up to 750MWh of BESS.
Wärtsilä supplies integrated BESS to co-located Florida project
Wärtsilä will supply a 15MW/30MWh BESS solution to Florida utility Tampa Electric Company (TECO) for co-location with a 25MW solar PV plant.
The Finland-headquartered technology company said the deal was booked in March 2023 but announced it publicly earlier this week. The project is scheduled to go into operation in the latter part of 2024 in Dover, an unincorporated community in Florida’s Hillsborough County.
TECO has pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2050, and claimed to have already lowered emissions 53% relative to 1999 levels. Solar PV is set to reach 14% of its energy mix during this year, representing 1,250MW of installed PV capacity, but the BESS ordered from Wärtsilä will be just the second utility-scale storage system on its networks.
The BESS will perform applications including resource adequacy, frequency regulating ancillary services and solar load-shifting.
Wärtsilä Energy, ranked among the leading global energy storage system integrators, is currently the subject of a strategic review by parent company Wärtsilä, through which options including full or partial divestment are being considered.
Canadian Solar latest to launch 5MWh container
Vertically-integrated solar PV company Canadian Solar has launched a new grid-scale battery storage product which features up to 2.35MW of power and 5MWh energy capacity in a 20ft container.
E-Storage, the energy storage arm of Canadian Solar’s manufacturing subsidiary CSI Solar, is launching SolBank 3.0, which as the name suggests is the third iteration of the company’s SolBank BESS solution.
With higher energy densities being achieved through improvements in both the battery and non-battery components of energy storage systems, SolBank 3.0 is the latest in a series of launches by major BESS integrators and manufacturers to approach the 5MWh capacity mark, with others including EVE Energy and Hithium.
From the previous generation, SolBank 3.0 represents a 45% increase in product-level capacity and a reduction in required time for commissioning of around 40%, while an optimised thermal management system means there is a reduction in auxiliary power consumption of about 30%.
Canadian Solar has announced a number of big BESS supply deals in recent weeks, including involvement in a 1,000MWh project in the UK and a 480MWh project in Australia for infrastructure investor Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), and a 200MWh deal with Engie for two more UK projects.
