Average reading time for this story is 1 minutes
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) authorized San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) to build three new energy storage facilities totaling 161MW/664MWh in order to provide the state with greater capacity to meet high energy demand on summer days and at night after solar power dissipates.
Altogether, these new projects will be able to provide enough capacity to meet the energy needs of more than 100,000 homes for up to four hours. Like other energy storage projects owned and operated by SDG&E, these new facilities will be connected to the state energy market, meaning the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) will be able to dispatch them any time they are needed to balance demand and supply on the grid statewide.
“Investing in advanced technologies like energy storage is critical to advancing our state and region’s aggressive climate goals, including getting to net zero greenhouse gas emissions, with the added benefit of making the energy grid more resilient,” said Miguel Romero, vice-president of energy innovation, SDG&E. “Project by project, step by step, we are making progress toward a cleaner, safer and more reliable energy future.”
The new facilities, which are slated to be completed in late 2022/early 2023, stemmed from the Emergency Reliability rule-making proceeding under which the CPUC directed utilities to contract for additional capacity to bolster the grid. The projects are the latest of a series of energy storage investments SDG&E has been making.
