To further enhance the region’s electric system reliability needs, Southern California Edison has signed long-term contracts for four projects totaling 590 megawatts of battery energy storage resources. The recently conducted solicitation and resulting contracts are in addition to the company’s May acquisition of 770 MWs of energy storage procurement, one of the country’s largest. These contracts increase SCE’s total amount of installed and procured battery storage capacity to approximately 2,050 MWs.

“Bringing more utility-scale battery storage resources online will improve the reliability of the grid and further the integration of renewable generation resources, like wind and solar, into the grid,” said William Walsh, SCE vice president of Energy Procurement & Management. “As California transitions to 100% clean renewable energy to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change, battery storage will play a key role in harnessing the value of these cost-effective, carbon-free resources in a reliable manner.”

Three of the four projects are utility-scale projects totaling 585 MW and will take advantage of lithium-ion batteries that can store energy for use later.

The fourth project is a 5 MW demand response contract that will use energy from customer-owned energy storage. Economically impacted communities that suffer most from the effects of air pollution will provide 5% of the MWs for this project.

One of the many ways these flexible energy resources can be used is by capturing solar energy during the day and distributing the energy as the sun sets and energy use remains high. They can also be used to respond to the California Independent System Operator signals, high-demand events, heat waves or when the energy grid is strained.

The projects are expected to come online by August 2022 and 2023.

The procurement was part of a robust competitive process initiated by SCE last year.

As laid out in Pathway 2045, SCE estimates the state needs to add 30 GW of utility-scale storage to the grid and 10 GW of storage from distributed energy resources to meet the state’s clean energy and carbon neutrality goals. These new contracts will further help California meet these goals while providing additional grid reliability. They also help improve California’s economy by creating craft and skilled clean energy jobs while reducing GHG emissions.

The contracts will require California Public Utilities Commission approval and SCE expects to submit them for approval before the end of the year.

About Southern California Edison

An Edison International (NYSE: EIX) company, Southern California Edison is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving a population of approximately 15 million via 5 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within Central, Coastal and Southern California.

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