- Large-scale solar PV and energy storage developer Southern Current announced that it signed a PPA with Dominion Energy South Carolina (DESC) for the Lone Star Solar project.
- The Lone Star Solar project represents Dominion Energy South Carolina’s first significant investment into large-scale battery storage.
Large-scale solar PV and energy storage developer Southern Current announced that it signed a US$200 million PPA with Dominion Energy South Carolina (DESC) for the state’s Lone Star solar-plus-storage power plant project. This is one of four large-scale clean energy projects featured as highlights of Southern Current parent company EnergyRe’s portfolio on its website. It will include 107.8MWdc of solar PV generation capacity and a 198MWh battery energy storage system (BESS). The rated power output of the battery system was not given in MW. However, The 572-acre site in South Carolina’s Calhoun County will go into commercial operation at an unspecified date next year.
EnergyRe gave the estimated project investment cost of about US$200 million, in addition to clean energy. Reports show that the project would also generate US$10 million in property taxes paid to the state each year, and its construction phase will create about 185 jobs. The Lone Star Solar project represents Dominion Energy South Carolina’s first significant investment into large-scale battery storage. It will undoubtedly be the largest on the utility’s network to date.
Dominion Energy, active in eight different US states, has been slower to procure battery storage than some other investor-owned utilities (IOUs) in the country, but that looks set to change, especially in Virginia. It has been ordered to fulfil a significant portion of Virginia’s 3.1GW by 2035 energy storage deployment target, which became law as part of the state clean energy policy at the start of 2021. The company’s first 16MW of BESS pilot projects toward that aim are up and running in Virginia and Dominion is targeting net zero emissions by 2050.