In a deal spanning 20 projects, seven states, two power markets and more solar than the entire state of Florida has installed to date, ACCIONA has agreed to a deal with Tenaska to acquire 3 GW of utility-scale solar and 1 GW of co-located solar and energy storage.
This represents one of the largest deals known to pv magazine. What’s more is that the projects aren’t all that far from going on-line, CEO of ACCIONA’s Energy Division in North America, Rafael Esteban boldly shared: “We will bring a significant portion of the portfolio into service between 2021 and 2023.”
Specially, ACCIONA envisions commissioning eight projects by the end of 2023, adding around 1.5 GW of peak capacity to its North American renewable energy portfolio.
And, if we want to play the exponential capacity game, it seems as if this deal will set the record. Prior to this acquisition, ACCIONA’s entire American solar portfolio was comprised of just the 64 MW Nevada Solar One concentrated solar plant, just outside of Las Vegas. On the global scale, however, the company owns over 10 GW of renewable generation assets.
And while 3 GW of solar is massive, 1 GW of battery storage is, quite literally, unlike anything we have ever seen in the United States. To date, the country has only 899 MW of operating batter storage. And while that figure is anticipated to reach 1 GW by year’s end, even then this is 1/67th of the total installed solar capacity and an even smaller percent of installed renewable energy capacity.
In July, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) has released a report predicting that the volume of battery storage will more than double to 2,500 MW by 2023. Considering both the above goal of having the majority of this project pipeline in operation by 2023 and the size of the pipeline, this deal alone could help the United States achieve or, moreover, surpass that figure.
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