Southern Power Co. and esVolta LP have entered partnership to develop four utility-scale energy storage projects in California. The total scale of these projects is set at 86MW (345MWh). Southern Power is a wholesale electricity supplier and a subsidiary of Southern Company, a utility provider headquartered in the state of Georgia. esVolta specializes in energy storage solutions based on lithium-ion batteries and designed for grid support services.
The financing of one of the four projects has already been completed. At the same time, the two parties are also collaborating on developing a portfolio of energy storage technologies and services.
Regarding this partnership, Bill Grantham, president of Southern Power, said that battery storage as an emerging technology has the potential to completely transform the way that electricity is supplied. Grantham added that joining hands with esVolta in this area constitutes a critical part of his company’s business strategy. Partnership deals such as this will improve Southern Power’s competitiveness so that it can address new demands from clients and keep up with the changing industry.
While the details of the partnership agreement have yet to be revealed, Southern Power via a press release has stated that this transaction meets the company’s low-risk requirements for developing or acquiring interests in projects under long-term contracts.
Randolph Mann, president and founder of esVolta, also expressed enormous excitement about this deal. Mann praised Southern Power as an exemplary leader in the American utility market. He also said that esVolta will be able to provide clients with more high-quality solutions for the grid infrastructure as it works alongside the brilliant team at Southern Power.
A flurry of energy storage projects are underway across California, with each succeeding one being larger in scale than its predecessors. In June, AES Corp., another major American utility company, broke ground on a 100MW (400MWh) energy storage project in Long Beach. The batteries used in this project, which is also known as the Alamitos energy storage facility, is supplied by Fluence Energy LLC, a joint venture formed by AES and Siemens AG.
SCE Corp., which is the primary electricity supplier in Southern California, announced this April that it had signed contracts to build six energy storage facilities with a total scale of 181MW. The company made the decision to invest more on battery storage in the wake of the 2015 gas leak at Aliso Canyon. That particular event disrupted the operation of the peaker plants in Southern California and threatened power outage across the entire region. Since then, SCE has been setting up more energy storage facilities so as to ensure the reliability of its grid infrastructure.
(This article is an English translation of news content provided by ESCN.)