NRG Energy has been awarded multiple contracts with Southern California Edison for various plans including repowering Mandalay facility with efficient natural gas generation, installing energy efficiency products in California and for developing battery storage system.
NRG will repower Edison’s Mandalay facility in Oxnard with 262 megawatts of flexible and efficient natural gas generation under a 20-year PPA with SCE.
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Besides, under long-term contracts, company will install178 MW of Preferred Resources that includes both demand response and energy efficiency products at sites across Southern California.
In addition, NRG will develop a two megawatt-hour battery storage system.
This is a tremendous opportunity to advance the forward-thinking efforts of the State of California and Southern California Edison to make a significantly more sustainable and reliable electricity grid, said, John Chillemi, president, NRG Energy’s West Region.
The repowering of Mandalay will ensure reliability, helping integration of renewables into the grid. Two large steam units at the site will be removed to increase coastal viewshed. Repowering works of Mandalay units will be completed by 2020.
This project counterparts NRG’s 600 MW Carlsbad Energy Center, for which NRG plans removal of five steam units at Carlsbad, California and replace them with smaller and fast start peaking units.
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The Carlsbad Energy Center will help in integrating renewables into the grid that will reduce environmental impact significantly.
This project is waiting to get CPUC approval of a 20 year PPA and will come online by 2017.
These contracts follow a sequence of projects that have achieved more power to California through various clean energy segments.
NRG as well as its subsidiaries own the 720 MW Marsh Landing, 550 MW El Segundo and 500 MW Walnut Creek power plants with fast start capabilities.
In addition, NRG Yield’s wind farm in California is nation’s largest one. Through these operations companies provide more than a thousand megawatts of solar from numerous solar arrays, including the world’s largest concentrated solar thermal project.
NRG has converted Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara into a solar generator that can power a season of NFL home games.
It also operates the eVgo network having nearly 85 DC fast chargers for California’s 100,000 electric vehicles and is retrofitting eVgo electric vehicle charging sites to be compatible with the new DC fast charger standard being used by the BMW i3, Chevrolet Spark and Volkswagen eGolf.
These DC fast chargers can charge most electric vehicles to 80 percent of full charge in 30 minutes or less.
Sabeena Wahid
editor@greentechlead.com