Tag Archive for: solarandbatteries

Utilities tend to treat solar & batteries as threats to their power grids. CA’s policy will now tap their flexible power to benefit the grid.

California’s new rules allow solar and batteries to help out the grid

For years, utilities have grappled with how to handle the ever-growing number of solar and battery systems trying to connect to the lower-voltage grids that deliver power to customers. That’s especially true for midsize projects like, say, a solar array that might adorn the roof of a multiunit apartment complex or a community-solar project that generates power shared by hundreds of dispersed customers.

On the one hand, utilities have eyed such projects warily, fearing that if the solar panels or batteries inject too much power onto local circuits at moments when electricity demand is low, it might cause grid instability or safety problems. As a result, utilities have thrown up barriers that have delayed or halted grid connections.

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Source: Canary Media

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The Edwards Sanborn Solar & Energy Storage project incorporates the highest capacity solar farm in the US with the largest battery storage system in the world.

Solar and batteries go big in the desert

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Discussions of solar energy can be quick to point out its intermittent nature: the Sun does not always shine in any one place all the time. It does, however, shine quite a bit in the Mojave Desert in California. And as it happens, the Mojave is the location of a large new solar power plant integrated with battery storage. The Edwards Sanborn Solar and Energy Storage project incorporates the highest capacity solar farm in the United States with the largest battery storage system in the world.

The facility came online in February 2023 and became fully operational in January 2024. The OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager-2) on Landsat 9 captured this image of the project and its nearly 2 million solar panels on January 12, 2024. The site lies approximately 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Los Angeles, in an area of the U.S. with some of the largest amounts of solar energy reaching the ground.

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Source: Earth Observatory

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