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June
28, 2023
By Andy
Colthorpe
PPA with Southern California
Edison for Leeward Renewable
Energy’s first standalone BESS - Energy-Storage.News
![](images/images_07_05_2023/leeward-omers-kern-county-1024x768.jpg)
Leeward Renewable Energy board members and
some of the team at OMERS, the renewables developer’s financial
backer, visiting the company’s Kern County developments earlier this
year. Image: LRE via Twitter.
US developer Leeward Renewable Energy has signed
a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with utility Southern
California Edison for a 126MW battery storage project in California’s
Kern County.
Texas-headquartered Leeward Renewable Energy (LRE) has a background in
wind energy development. Combining its wind and solar PV developments,
it has to date brought around 2.7GW of generation capacity online
across more than 20 projects. LRE is in the portfolio of OMERS
Infrastructure, an arm of Canadian pension plan investor OMERS.
Although its solar PV development activities include utility-scale
solar-plus-storage projects, several of which have been reported on by
this site, its Antelope Valley Battery Energy Storage System (Antelope
Valley BESS) is LRE’s first-ever standalone battery storage project.
With a 4-hour duration (504MWh), it will help Southern California
Edison (SCE), one of California’s three main investor-owned utilities
(IOUs), meet its resource adequacy requirements and increase its use
of renewable energy.
Including the aforementioned solar-plus-storage projects in its
portfolio, it will also bring Leeward’s BESS track record to more than
1GWh in operation. Leeward said construction is expected to begin in
the middle of this year, which given that it is now July, must be
imminent, with Antelope Valley BESS scheduled to go into commercial
operation early in 2024.
Antelope Valley BESS is on a site adjacent to two LRE
solar-plus-storage projects: Chapparal Springs, which is a 174MW PV
plant paired with a 88MW/352MWh BESS, on which LRE closed financially
in January with a US$260 million construction financing deal; and
Rabbitrush, a 100MW solar PV plant with 20MW/50MWh BESS.
Chapparal Springs is under construction and LRE signed a PPA for that
project with Valley Clean Energy, one of California’s non-profit
Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) energy suppliers.
System integrator Powin Energy was picked as the BESS supplier to
Rabbitrush in 2021, and the project marked the first to be supplied
with thin-film PV modules by US maker First Solar in a 10GW supply
deal with LRE.
Construction of Rabbitrush was completed and commercial operation
started in late 2022. Two other CCAs, Central Coast Community Energy
and Silicon Valley Clean Energy are offtakers to that one, through
15-year PPAs.
Green Play Ammonia™, Yielder® NFuel Energy.
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