As SRP inaugurates BESS assets ahead of summer peak challenges, Court Rich, co-founder and director of Rose Law Group’s renewable energy & utility infrastructure department, says batteries are the ‘most flexible resource in the utilities’

By Andy Colthorpe | Energy Storage News

An event on Monday (24 June) celebrated the opening of two large-scale battery storage systems in the service area of Arizona utility Salt River Project (SRP), including the southwest US state’s largest project of its type to date.

Salt River Project and developer Plus Power celebrated the commissioning and imminent start of commercial operations at the 250MW/1,000MWh Sierra Estrella Energy Storage facility and 90MW/360MWh Superstition Energy Storage facility.

Sierra Estrella, in the city of Avondale, Maricopa County, is the largest standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) in Arizona so far.

Although Salt River Project (SRP) earlier this year added a slightly larger 260MW system at its Sonoran Solar Energy Center, that project charges directly from a solar PV array of the same nameplate generation capacity as its battery storage component’s output, making Sierra Estrella the largest to charge from the grid.

Superstition, in the town of Gilbert, also in Maricopa, is expected to come online this week, slightly earlier than its larger counterpart. Sierra Estrella has also finished its commissioning stage and is due to enter service ahead of the brutal Arizonan summer and the attendant spikes in peak energy demand that will entail.

Both projects availed of tax credit incentives through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), while SRP said the majority of EPC work was carried out by unionised workers.

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“Battery energy storage use is in full swing and growing exponentially in Arizona as our utilities do everything they can to keep up with surging demand for power. Batteries are the most flexible resource in the utilities’ portfolio and help solar and other renewables become even more reliable and valuable by storing energy for use whenever it’s needed. It is great to see first responders in Avondale and in Gilbert along with many other fire departments in the state growing comfortable with batteries as new but very safe technology for storing electricity. Batteries with or without solar are needed for the continued economic development of the state of Arizona and projects like these will continue to be necessary.”

-Court Rich, co-founder and director of Rose Law Group’s renewable energy and utility infrastructure department