Enel Green Power North America has completed the 181-MW Lily solar + storage project located in Kaufman County, Texas. Lily is the company’s first project in North America that integrates a solar plant with utility-scale battery storage.
Credit: Enel Green Power North America
The project includes 55 MWdc of battery storage, part of Enel’s installation of around 600 MW of new storage capacity on the Texas power grid by 2022.
“This milestone signals a new era for our company as we start delivering on our major commitment to grid-scale battery storage in the United States. By pairing renewable energy with storage technology, we are supporting a cleaner and more flexible grid,” said Paolo Romanacci, head of Enel Green Power in the United States and Canada. “We are ready to answer the call of policymakers and business leaders to accelerate the energy transition in North America. As such, we are committing more investment than ever before to achieve accelerated growth targets.”
Located southeast of Dallas, the Lily solar + storage project is composed of 421,400 PV bifacial panels that are expected to generate over 367 GWh each year, which will be delivered to the grid and will charge the co-located battery. The battery storage system can dispatch electricity when solar power generation is low, while also providing the grid access to a clean supply of electricity during periods of high demand.
The Lily solar project was initiated and developed by Red River Renewable Energy, a joint venture among affiliates of Sun Chase Power and MAP Energy.
Enel Green Power North America
Billy Ludt is associate editor of Solar Power World.
It’s looking like something like an expected 450 to 500 watts per panel peak during the day. The mention of 181MW with a 55MWdc battery seems slim for such a project of 421 thousand plus bifacial solar PV panels. One should be designing for about 33% of the average daily energy generation to allow time shifting into the night time hours after the solar PV generation portion of the day is through.
This plant is supposed to be on average 367GWh/year. This averages out to 1GWh/day, then one should have a 330MWh energy storage system. Right now at Moss Landing in California a 300MW/1200MWh ESS has just been put online. Now it is to be expanded to 400MW/1600MWh. The future Elkhorn project should make the ESS a build out of 1500MW/6000MWh about the time Diablo Canyon plant is decommissioned in 2025.
Browse the current issue and archived issues of Solar Power World in an easy-to-use, high-quality format. Bookmark, share and interact with the leading solar construction magazine today.
Solar policy differs across state lines and regions. Click to see our monthly roundup of recent legislation and research throughout the country.
Copyright © 2021 WTWH Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Site Map | Privacy Policy | RSS