Citing California's emerging capacity shortage, technology supplier GE Renewable Energy and project developer Convergent Energy & Power LP on Sept. 25 announced a supply agreement under which GE will deliver 25 MW/100 MWh of battery storage for three separate projects at undisclosed sites in the state, two of which will be co-located.
"We are bullish on California," Convergent COO and CFO Frank Genova said in an interview. Part of the deal will help to fulfill the developer's contract for 35 MW of energy storage with Edison International's Southern California Edison Co. he said.
The California Public Utilities Commission approved the agreement with Southern California Edison in 2018 as part of a pilot program to test whether demand response, energy storage and other clean "preferred resources" can substitute for natural gas-fired peaking generation.
Such technologies may have an opportunity to demonstrate their larger reach under a potential 2,500-MW solicitation that state regulators are considering in Southern California to offset the scheduled retirement of gas generation relying on ocean water for cooling.
"We are seeing [California] utilities be more thoughtful around where and how they buy storage," Genova said. "They are not just fulfilling a mandate. They are enhancing reliability."
GE's expanding battery business
The supply agreement with Convergent marks General Electric Co.'s further expansion into battery storage, following its recently disclosed deal to integrate a 100-MW, three-hour battery storage system into a 200-MW solar project in Australia.
"These projects are part of GE's growing [storage] footprint in North America, the U.K. and Australia," Troy Miller, GE's sales leader for energy storage in North America, said in an interview at the Solar Power International and Energy Storage International trade show in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The multisite project with Convergent is the company's largest supply deal in the U.S. to date. GE has nearly 500 MWh of battery storage projects under construction or in operation and has "literally gigawatts" in its pipeline that will be completed by 2022 or 2023, Miller said.
Several other projects under development in California will "service the need for retiring assets and shortfalls in capacity," the sales leader said. "We've seen a tremendous increase in the interest level for our hybridized offering," pointing to the Stanton Energy Reliability Center, a gas-battery hybrid plant under construction near Los Angeles, as well as demand for renewable energy-battery hybrids.
