BLM approves Clearway’s 150MW BESS at California wind project
BLM approves Clearway's 150MW BESS at California wind project
The US The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has given the go-ahead for a large-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) co-located with a wind plant in California.
BLM has approved the Alta Wind Battery Energy Storage System project, which will be located within the existing right-of-way land of the Alta 1 Wind Facility project in Kern County, California.
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The BESS is being developed by independent power producer (IPP) Clearway Energy, as per the BLM National NEPA Register. The Register said it would generate 150MW of power and “store up to 1,200MW” of electricity. Energy-Storage.news has asked the BLM to clarify the latter figure, which we would assume should be MWh/megawatt-hours, and will update this article if and when a response is received.
The BESS will utilise lithium-ion batteries and occupy 20 acres of land, with 23 used in total for the balance of plant (BOP) components. An expected commercial operation date (COD) has not been revealed.
Although unconfirmed by the BLM and Clearway, Alta 1 Wind appears to be part of the larger Alta Wind project that Clearway acquired from developer Terra-Gen a decade ago. It was then said to be 947MW in power, although recent announcements indicate it could be larger.
The BESS would smooth out the wind plant’s generation by discharging to the grid when the plant’s production tails off.
California has the most BESS deployments in the US, driven by its high solar PV deployments and long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) between utilities and project owners( through grid operator CAISO’s Resource Adequacy framework), enabling financing for large-scale projects.
Clearway is set to commission a separate BESS project totalling 147MW/588MWh also in Kern County this year and is also highly active in Hawaii, where it has multiple large-scale solar-plus-storage projects online.
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Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.