Canadian Solar has entered into an agreement with Goldman Sachs Renewable Power to deliver and integrate an energy storage solution into the 100 MWac Mustang solar plant in California. According to the supply contract and long-term service agreement, the energy storage system will be a 75 MW/300 MWh lithium-ion battery solution with a 4-hour backup facility. The construction of the battery-based energy storage component of the project will start in early 2021 and it is expected to be operational by the second half of 2021.
The Mustang solar plant located in King’s County, California was developed by Canadian Solar’s wholly owned subsidiary Recurrent Energy and connected to the grid in August 2016. In May 2019, Goldman Sachs acquired the project’s equity stake. This energy storage system will be a retrofit addition to the project with Canadian Solar providing a complete integrated solution that will include a lithium iron phosphate-based technology package, along with all operations, maintenance and battery augmentation services.
On this occasion Dr. Shawn Qu, Chairman and CEO of Canadian Solar, commented, “We are pleased to start supplying this large-scale solar plus energy storage project which will be fully developed by Canadian Solar with our own proprietary technological capabilities. The adoption and integration of energy storage will improve the utilisation of solar energy and meaningfully enlarge our global addressable market.”