Oil and gas major TotalEnergies has put a 380MW solar PV, 255MWh battery storage project into commercial operation in the ERCOT, Texas market.
Located south of Houston, Myrtle Solar is co-located with 225MWh of energy storage systems (ESS) supplied by affiliate entity Saft, and includes 705,000 solar panels.
Most of the capacity of the plant, 70%, will be supplied to the company’s own industrial plants in the US Golf Coast region, while the remaining 30% will be supplied to real estate firm Kilroy Realty under a 15-year corporate power purchase agreement (cPPA) indexed on merchant prices.
Interest in Texas keeps increasing, both at a downstream and upstream level, with the US state second to California in terms of installed solar capacity, but is expected to add the most solar PV in the coming five years, with more than 40GW, according to trade association Solar Energy Industries Association.
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In order to achieve this, Texas will need to invest in upgrading its transmission grid if it wants to avoid any curtailment across the state as projections expect Texas to more than double its solar and wind capacity by 2035.
TotalEnergies is currently developing a 720MW solar farm in the state, for which it recently secured a PPA with French building materials manufacturer Saint-Gobin for 100MW of the plant’s capacity.
