Enel Green Power (EGP) expects to move the 146MW Lily PV plus storage project near Dallas, Texas into operation by next summer, the Italian’s first such hybrid facility in North America and among the largest near a major city in the Lone Star state.
The project is designed to generate more than 367GWh of electric power each year, which will be fed into a co-located battery system with a fully dispatchable 75MWh storage capacity that will be wired into to the ERCOT grid that supplies 90% of the Texas’ power.
EGP CEO Antonio Cammisecra said the project highlights the huge potential of renewable energy growth and represents the future of power generation that will increasingly be comprised of “sustainable, flexible plants that provide zero-carbon electricity while boosting grid stability”.
In addition to the Lily solar plant, EGP plans to install 1GW of battery storage capacity across its new and existing US wind and solar projects over the next two years.
PV-plus-storage is emerging as a leading clean energy investment play in Texas, which has more high-quality solar resource that is available for development than any US state – and hardly any of which has been harnessed.
Solar’s big appeal is its availability in peak demand periods during the hot summer months when spot electricity prices often soar in the ERCOT service region. That is not the case with wind in West Texas where most installations are found as it tends to blow best at night and in the early morning when power demand is relatively low.
Investors are finding creative ways to develop solar off-take products that better price value for the bell curve shape, and this is resulting in a very stable revenue streams for utility-scale projects.
Solar availability in hot months has further increased in value in the last several years with ERCOT reserve margins at historically low levels with baseload generators reluctant to add capacity due to depressed power prices.
Investors are pouring billions of dollars into solar development that is facilitated by the resource shining mainly over privately-owned land, making lease deals generally easier to arrange.
A brake on development is lack of high-voltage transmission in some areas with world-class solar resource in southwest Texas, a reason why developers are trying to locate some projects closer to load centres when land is available. ERCOT is working to expand transmission capacity for solar in the first half of this decade.
