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Calpine asks to put review of gas, battery storage project on hold

Another developer of a proposed power plant in southern California has put its project on hold.

Calpine Corp. subsidiary Mission Rock Energy Center LLC recently asked the California Energy Commission to suspend its application for approval of the Mission Rock Energy Center, a proposed 275-MW natural gas-fired power plant with 25 MW of battery units for electricity storage in Ventura County.

The company gave notice of the suspension on March 9, pointing to an apparent lack of opportunity for the plant to take part in Southern California Edison Co.'s recently published request for offers for local reliability projects in the Moorpark subarea.

The developer had pitched the project as one to meet local reliability needs in the Moorpark subarea of the Big Creek/Ventura local reliability area. But since the Mission Rock Energy Center was proposed, "California policies and programs relating to grid reliability — particularly local reliability and procurement — have been in transition," the company said.

According to the notice, policy changes now under evaluation may further shape markets, and it is not clear whether the reliability issues in the Moorpark subarea created by the departure of 2,000 MW of local generation will be resolved by possible transmission solutions and procurement from the request for offers.

Suspending the proceeding will allow for time for the issues to resolve themselves, the generator said. Once there is more market certainty, Mission Rock said it would ask the commission to resume or modify the processing of its application.

Mission Rock filed for approval of the project in December 2015, telling the commission that the project would combine energy efficient generation needed in the area with energy storage technology to provide more capacity to the grid. (Docket No. 15-AFC-02)

Other recent setbacks for gas-fired plants

In November 2017, a commission panel overseeing review of NRG Energy Inc. proposed Puente power plant suspended the proceeding in response to the company's request. The 262-MW gas-fired plant in Oxnard, Calif., referred to as the Mandalay Generating Station CT (Puente Power Project), was intended to shore up reliability after older power plants retired under California's once-through cooling regulations.

However, the company asked for the proceeding to be put on hold after the committee indicated it would recommend rejection of the project. NRG Energy also said suspending the proceeding would allow for time to see if any "preferred resources" alternatives to the project were feasible.

A unit of NRG also recently said it plans to close three gas-fired power plants in southern California starting this June.

Prior to that, in January, the California Public Utilities Commission told Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to solicit bids for energy storage and preferred resources such as energy efficiency, demand response and distributed solar to "obviate the need" for contracts with three existing Calpine natural gas-fired power plants.