SRP announces new battery storage project south of Phoenix
Salt River Project is adding 200 megawatts of new power storage to its grid with the cooperation of a Houston energy company that will build a new battery facility near Coolidge in Pinal County.
The company, EDP Renewables North America LLC, will build the Flatland Energy Storage Project, which will use Tesla’s lithium-ion battery technology to reserve excess energy generated during lower-demand times and save it for peak demand times.
The facility will have enough capacity to power up to 45,000 homes for four hours during peak demand times, SRP said.
This is the latest in a number of SRP battery storage projects going up in and around the Valley. This past summer, SRP unveiled its new 250-megawatt Signal Butte energy storage project in Mesa’s Eliot Road Technology Corridor. That follows announcements of similar systems in Avondale and Gilbert — one of them being Arizona’s largest standalone battery facility.
“Battery energy storage is an essential piece of SRP’s plan to decarbonize our portfolio and maximize the amount of renewable energy delivered to our customers,” said Bobby Olsen, SRP associate general manager and chief planning, strategy and sustainability executive, in a statement. “The Flatland Energy Storage Project will help us meet the increasing energy demand of one of the fastest growing areas of the nation.”
The facility will be located within the Brittlebush Solar Park, where SRP previously partnered with EDP Renewables to build a solar energy plant to generate 200 megawatts of power. That facility’s power output will be dedicated to a new $1 billion data center on land it bought in Mesa that’s being built by Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc. It came online in August.
The new location will allow the battery to store energy from the grid or from the solar facility to best match the output to times of highest customer demand, SRP said.
SRP Flatland represents $271M investment
SRP said the Flatland Energy Storage Project represents a capital investment of more than $271 million and will provide more than $7 million in tax payments to local governments. The project is expected to create 60 construction jobs and two permanent jobs when it is finished.
“Storage is key to modernizing the US power grid and is a requisite in accelerating the adoption of renewable energy, while boosting grid reliability and resiliency,” said Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of EDP Renewables North America, in a statement.
Separately, SRP announced earlier this month that it would provide $125,000 in economic development grants to three northern Arizona municipalities affected by the transition away from coal-fired power plants.
The grants will come from the Utilities’ Grant Funding Program, which is jointly funded by SRP, along with utilities Arizona Public Service and Tucson Electric Power.
The grant recipients are:
- The town of Eagar, which will get $25,000 to support grant writing efforts, and another $25,000 grant to support a collaboration with the U.S. Economic Development Administration to expand utilities and infrastructure at the industrial park located on the town’s west side.
- The city of Page, which will get $25,000 to help the city’s application for Economic Development Administration disaster relief grant funds for the town’s Downtown Business Development Project, and another $25,000 going toward more than a fifth of the cost to develop long-range transportation plan studies.
- The city of St. Johns, which will get $25,000 to help pay for a consultant to develop a plan for roadway resurfacing, widening and realignment to improve traffic flow and safety.
Learn more at the Phoenix Business Journal