Tuesday, February 4, 2020

NextEra Looks to Add Batteries to Its Existing Solar Fleet

NextEra added 2.7 gigawatts of new renewables to its fleet in 2019.
By: Karl Erik Stromsta


NextEra Energy, North America’s leading wind and solar generator, is combing through its base of existing solar facilities with an eye to retroactively adding batteries, as it adopts a more “aggressive” view on the falling cost of energy storage.
“We increasingly see storage as an important standalone business in its own right,” CEO Jim Robo said Friday on an earnings call. The company is reviewing “a number of opportunities to add storage to our existing solar sites to take advantage of the [Investment Tax Credit] and enhance the value of our existing projects for customers.”
NextEra has already set a precedent for this approach: In 2018 it added a 10-megawatt battery facility to its existing Babcock Ranch solar farm in Florida. Last March things got much more interesting when its Florida Power & Light unit announced plans to build a 409-megawatt/900-megawatt-hour battery project known as the Manatee Energy Storage Center, to be charged by an existing solar facility.
For the rest of the story visit: https://NextEratoAddBatteries