Developers are awaiting approval by the California Public Utilities Commission to begin construction on 770 MW of four-hour lithium-ion battery energy storage systems for Southern California Edison in what is seen as one of the the largest such U.S. procurements.

该系统将支持该公用事业公司已与四个开发人员签订合同的新的清洁能源项目，并获得监管机构18luck官网的批准。这些将取代退休的老化天然气发电厂的容量。

Solar and wind poweradditions will require energy storage to maintain system reliability. The procurement’s cost was not disclosed.

Most of the selected battery projects will be co-located with solar plants to charge the batteries.

“This is just the first part of a two-part process,” says William V. Walsh, SCE vice president of energy procurement and management. The utility expects to procure more capacity over the next six months.

NextEra Energy Resources has three storage system contracts totaling 460 MW, while Southern Power won two totaling 160 MW; LS Power is contracted for 100 MW and TerraGen Power will build 50 MW. All contracts have a commercial online date of Aug. 1, 2021.

“California has a pretty aggressive mandate to have 100% of their electricity coming from renewable-energy sources by 2045,” says Tim Grejtak, analyst for Lux Research Inc., and battery systems are “getting bigger. . . . We’re now getting into the triple-digit-megawatt range for these installations.”

SCE’s procurement represents a huge acceleration in the rate of energy-storage growth in the U.S.

彭博社报告说，去年有293兆瓦在全国上线。一个300兆瓦的MOSS着陆项目将于今年在加利福尼亚州中部开放，佛罗里达州的409兆瓦的海牛储能中心计划于明年年底开放。

Grejtak说：“我们认为资产量表现在已经处于临界点。”他补充说，钒氧化还原流量电池与锂离子具有不同的缩放系数和性能变量，这使其具有100兆瓦的吸引力。

“The levelized cost of electricity from a battery is equal to that from a gas-peaker plant now, and the battery prices are falling steeply,” says George Crabtree, director of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research at Argonne National Laboratory. Peaker plant costs are flat and the technology is mature.

他补充说，SCE预计的2021年运营日期“真的很快，而且您永远不会迅速运行燃气工厂。”