Westbridge Energy Corporation has added another large-scale solar-plus-storage project to its development portfolio in Alberta, Canada.
The Vancouver-headquartered company was formed by a group of renewable and traditional energy, finance and legal professionals to develop greenfield solar sites.
Westbridge’s strategic view is that the combination of solar with battery storage, solar with hydrogen and the deployment of artificial intelligence and grid optimisation offers its projects the best futureproofing and resale value opportunities.
The company seeks out institutional or corporate buyers for its projects at or before construction begins.
As reported by Energy-Storage.news in March, its development projects include a 278MWp solar plant in Alberta’s Georgetown and Sunnynook, a 236MWp solar PV plant also in Alberta. Both projects are being planned with 100MW each of battery storage.
At that time, both projects were at different stages of applying for regulatory approval from the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) and obtaining grid connection agreements.
Last week, the company said it is now developing Dolcy, another solar PV plant with a battery energy storage system (BESS), this time combining 250MWp of solar with another 100MW BESS.
Dolcy will be located in the east-central Alberta Municipality of Provost. Westbridge has secured a long-term solar lease for about 1,025 acres of land with the private landowners. Environmental studies are underway and it is at Stage 1 of the grid interconnection process with TSO Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO).
Westbridge said in an update that Georgetown is now at Stage 3 of that process, while Sunnynook is at Stage 2.
Together with Accalia point, a 221MWp solar-only project the company is developing in Texas, the developer pointed out that its development portfolio now exceeds 1GW of solar PV.
If the projects go ahead they will add 300MW of BESS for the Canadian province, which only got its first large-scale BESS (pictured above) commissioned in late 2020. A few others have since been announced and are in various stages of development or construction, including GreenGate Power Corporation’s Jurassic Solar+, which would combine 216MWac solar PV with 80MW/80MWh of BESS, a couple of solar-paired flow battery demonstration projects and a 180MW BESS that developer TransAlta Renewables wants to charge from a hydroelectric plant.