Energy Storage Projects to Replace Three Natural Gas Power Plants in California

One of the projects, Vistra Energy Moss Landing storage project, would be owned by Dynegy Marketing and Trade, LLC, a unit Vistra Energy Corp. The holding company manages more than 40 gigawatts of generating capacity across 12 states. The project would be a transmission-connected, stand-alone lithium-ion battery energy storage resource in Monterey County. The facility, which would feature a 300-MW, four-hour duration battery array, could enter service in December 2020 under a 20-year contract.

A second project, Hummingbird Energy Storage, would be owned by a unit of esVolta, a new company that is partnering with Oregon-based Powin Energy Corp. and Australia-based Blue Sky Alternative Investments. The Santa Clara County–sited resource would include a 75-MW, four-hour-duration Li-ion battery array. It also could enter service in December 2020 and would operate under a 15-year contract.

One so-called “behind-the-meter” proposal also was accepted by PG&E. It came from Micronoc Inc. and would total 10 MW of four-hour-duration storage. In practice, the project would bundle the discharge capacity of lithium-ion batteries located at multiple customer sites. That’s in step with Micronoc’s business model of developing distributed energy storage projects, most of them so far in South Korea. A 10-year service contract with PG&E could start in October 2019.

PowerPack lithium-ion batteries from Tesla would form the backbone of a 182.5-MW array with a four-hour discharge duration. The batteries would be located at a PG&E substation in Monterrey County. The array could enter service by the end of 2020 and include a 20-year performance guarantee from Tesla.