Solar panels on public lands in Nevada. (Photo Credit: BLM Southern Nevada District Office)

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has announced its proposed roadmap for solar energy development on public lands across the West. 

The BLM hopes the release of the Final Utility-Scale Solar Energy Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and Proposed Resource Management Plan Amendments (also known as the proposed updated Western Solar Plan) will support continued progress on responsible permitting. 

The plan would make 31 million acres of public lands across 11 western states available for potential solar development, driving development closer to transmission lines or on previously disturbed lands and avoiding protected lands, sensitive cultural resources and important wildlife habitat.

Steering project proposals away from areas where they may conflict with other resources or uses is expected to help ensure responsible development and speed up the permitting process. 

The plan updates and expands the original 2012 Western Solar Plan in order to reflect changes in technology and meet the higher demand for solar energy development. This plan analyzes Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming, in addition to the six states analyzed in the original plan.

“The updated Western Solar Plan is a responsible, pragmatic strategy for developing solar energy on our nation’s public lands that supports national clean energy goals and long-term national energy security,” says BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning. 

“It will drive responsible solar development to locations with fewer potential conflicts while helping the nation transition to a clean energy economy, furthering the BLM’s mission to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.” 

No solar developments are authorized through this planning effort. Proposed projects will still undergo site-specific environmental review and public comment. This Final Utility-Scale Solar Energy Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement follows a draft published in January for public comment.

In total, BLM has now permitted clean energy projects on public lands with a total capacity of 29 GW. 

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El Sol Energy Storage Center (Source: Invenergy)

Invenergy has completed its 50 MW El Sol Energy Storage Center, its 10th battery energy storage project in Arizona to reach commercial operations since the start of last year. 

The company says Invenergy’s project portfolio accounts for nearly half of all storage facilities to come online in the state during that same time frame.  

“The start of commercial operations at El Sol is an exciting milestone for Invenergy, marking our 10th storage project online in the state which helps meet the high customer demand for clean energy in Arizona,” says Jim Shield, senior executive vice president and CCO at Invenergy. 

“Our investment in clean energy storage nationwide recognizes the growing need for diverse and safe energy sources and infrastructure that provides Americans with more reliable, affordable electricity year-round.”

All projects have been developed for Arizona Public Service (APS) in Maricopa and Yuma counties and added 200 MW to the state’s clean energy capacity.

The projects include Desert Star, Paloma, Cotton Center, Gila Bend I & II, Hyder I & II, Foothills I & II and El Sol. Later this year, Invenergy’s 70 MW Yuma Solar Energy Center is anticipated to begin operations, and the 275 MW Hashknife Solar Energy Center is expected to begin construction. 

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Source: Georgia Power

Georgia Power has identified locations for 500 MW of new battery energy storage systems (BESS) authorized by the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) earlier this year as part of the company’s 2023 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) Update. 

According to the company’s most recent filing with the Georgia PSC, the portfolio of BESS resources proposed by Georgia Power helps address the resource needs identified in the 2023 IRP Update.

Each of the proposed resources will consist of a four-hour duration BESS, with an eye for dispatching electricity by the winter of 2026. 

The new BESS facilities planned and under development are: 

The 128 MW Robins BESS in Bibb County. This site is co-located with the existing solar facility adjacent to the Robins Air Force Base and allows Georgia Power to leverage existing infrastructure, thereby eliminating the need to construct new transmission generator step-up (GSU) project-level substations.

The 49.5 MW Moody BESS in Lowndes County. Similar to the Robins BESS project, this project is co-located with the existing solar facility adjacent to the Moody Air Force Base and allows Georgia Power to also leverage existing infrastructure.

The 57.5 MW Hammond BESS which is a standalone project leveraging existing infrastructure from the retired coal-fired Plant Hammond facility. 

The 265 MW McGrau Ford Site Phase II BESS in Cherokee County. Given the existing site work, land acquisition and contracting for this project, Georgia Power will realize efficiencies in contracting and construction by using the same construction company and company-owned land. In addition, the BESS’ preliminary design provides an opportunity for Georgia Power to expand the project level substation and generation tie line rather than construct a new project level substation.

In addition to the 500 MW BESS projects from the 2023 IRP Update, Georgia Power is nearing completion on the 65 MW Mossy Branch Battery Facility located in Talbot County. The facility was approved in the 2019 IRP and will be Georgia Power’s first BESS resource. 

The company is also developing the 265 MW McGrau Ford Phase I BESS project, approved in the 2022 IRP, and expects it to enter service by the end of 2026.

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The Roadhouse project is one of NEER’s most advanced pipeline projects, having already secured an offtake agreement covering a portion of the project’s capacity with a public utility, as well as an interconnection agreement with the California Independent System Operator (CAISO). 
300MW/1,200MWh worth of BESS capacity at US$18.76/kW-month fixed rate 
The proposed Roadhouse Energy Storage project will utilise lithium-ion battery technology encompassing a 20-acre site located approximately 1.8 miles south of Champagne in the City of Ontario, California. 
NEER has already secured a power offtake agreement for half of the project’s capacity with Anaheim Public Utilities (APU), approved by the utility’s board of directors at an April 24 2024 meeting. 
Under the terms of the energy storage agreement (ESA), the Roadhouse project will supply APU with 300MW/1,200MWh worth of energy, capacity, and ancillary services for a period of 20 years at a US$18.76/kW-month fixed rate. 
As stipulated by the agreement, NEER has guaranteed a battery efficiency rate of 83.1% during the first year, decreasing annually to 78.2% in the final year.  
Project to provide 60% of APU’s summer peak demand 
The Roadhouse project was selected by APU after the utility issued a request for proposals (RFP) in October 2023 seeking renewable energy resources in order to reach its target of having a 60% renewable portfolio by 2030. 
As detailed in the agenda materials for the April APU meeting, an evaluation of NEER’s Roadhouse proposal for the RFP was carried out by software and consulting firm Ascend Analytics. As part of the suitability review, Ascend considered the project’s location, grid interconnection, dispatchability, developer experience, along with a cost-benefit assessment.  
APU will be responsible for dispatching the battery, which is capable of providing 60% of the utility’s summer peak demand. 
Construction on the APU portion of the project is contracted to start by April 1, 2026, with commercial operations expected by October 1, 2027. 
US$7 million in annual savings put towards additional renewable resources 
APU expects the ESA to cost an estimated US$71 million annually, made up of an annual US$67.5 million payment to NEER, along with a yearly US$3.5 million cost to charge the batteries. However, when considering the avoided capacity payments to CAISO, along with the project’s wholesale energy revenue, the utility expects to save an estimated US$7 million per year. 
The utility has said that it will use these savings to “acquire additional renewable energy resources to meet state compliance requirements”. 
CAISO interconnection agreement 
The developer has secured an interconnection agreement with CAISO and utility Southern California Edison (SCE) covering 300MW for the Roadhouse project, processed as part of the system operator’s cluster 13 process (queue no. 1768).  
Presumably, NEER will file a separate interconnection agreement for the remaining 300MW as part of a later CAISO cluster process. The project will connect to the CAISO grid via SCE’s Mira Loma 230kV substation. 
Rapid BESS deployment in CAISO 
Utility-scale BESS facilities, such as NEER’s proposed Roadhouse project, are vitally important for maintaining the California grid – a fact that was recently highlighted in a July 2024 CAISO battery storage report.
CAISO has seen a huge surge of new BESS capacity connected to its grid over the past few years, increasing from 500MW in 2020, all the way to 11.2GW as of June 2024, according to statistics from the recent report. 
The report found that batteries are accounting for a significant portion of CAISO’s energy and capacity needs, especially during the early evening when net loads are at their highest. During the hours of 5pm and 9pm during 2023, batteries provided on average 5.6% of CAISO’s energy needs, which was up from 2.4% in 2022, as reported in an identical study prepared by CAISO last year.  

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The new calculator aims to replace some of the more cost- and labour-intensive BESS design steps that this work represents.
EnSights claimed it can generate financial projections instantaneously and recommend the ideal battery size and project operation modes. It does this by assessing the size and technical capabilities of a proposed BESS against revenue data from energy and grid services market opportunities.
EnSights co-founder and CEO Alon Mashkovich said the new tool can help decision-makers mitigate some of the risks that the energy storage market still represents despite its rapid growth and the “great deal of opportunity.”
These risks include high capital costs, energy price volatility and incentive structures that can vary from state to state, or across different transmission areas and wholesale markets.
“We developed our storage calculator to not only mitigate these risks for decision-makers but to make BESS design cost-effective so that energy stakeholders can unlock market opportunities while maximising battery lifespan.”
Responding to customer demand
The product was developed in response to enquiries from customers who said that their ability to deploy battery storage was “severely limited and slowed” by the complexity of battery optimisation, EnSights’ chief product officer and co-founder Roy Fadida, said.
Fadida claimed that customers who have beta tested the calculator have already “significantly accelerated their battery deployment to meet growing demand in one of the fastest-growing storage markets.”
The software-as-a-service (SaaS) company created its BESS calculator with a proprietary model that balances financial returns over a system’s lifetime with the optimal asset lifespan.
In other words, it takes battery specifications and degradation parameters that include round-trip efficiency (RTE), depth of discharge (DoD), and charging and discharging cycles and calculates the trade-off between earning revenues from market opportunities and the impact that might have on the asset.
To date, EnSights has provided an AI-driven, cloud-based centralised monitoring and asset management platform for renewable energy installations and portfolios ranging in scale from residential to commercial & industrial (C&I) and utility-scale.
It joins a small handful of other software-based solutions available for calculating BESS returns and modelling system size, including products from Energy Toolbase and RatedPower.
EnSights, which is launching the product at the forthcoming RE+ clean energy industry show in Anaheim, California, in September, said the calculator is suitable for both hybrid solar-plus-storage projects as well as standalone BESS installations. EnSights can also onboard BESS projects to its asset management, monitoring and control platform, the company said.  

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The owner of the project is Trinasolar’s International System Business Unit (ISBU), its global project development. The standalone BESS will support grid stability and also do wholesale energy trading.
The project has a contract with Italian transmission system operator (TSO) Terna to provide the Fast Reserve ancillary service for 1,000 annual operation hours, following a tender run by the TSO. The remaining capacity will be used for energy arbitrage.
Gabriele Buccini, head of utility storage at Trina Storage said: “Commissioning our first utility storage system in Italy is a significant milestone for Trina Storage and the wider Trinasolar group. Trinasolar is an integrated provider of renewable energy solutions, and Trina Storage and Trinasolar ISBU are proud to have worked together to connect the company’s first system to the Italian grid.”
Trina’s Elementa 2 grid-scale BESS product uses in-house manufactured battery cells. The company talked through this approach in a recent webinar with Energy-Storage.news, which you can watch here.
Italy has relatively little grid-scale energy storage online but that number is expected to soar in the next few years, with Terna estimating it ultimately needs 71GWh online by 2030 to integrates its renewables pipeline (Premium access article).
Projects will be monetised through a combination of ancillary services, which have kickstarted the market’s growth, energy arbitrage and a dedicated time-shifting capacity market mechanism where renewable IPPS can buy time-shifting capacity from BESS operators, detailed in the above piece.

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It also said that, as Energy-Storage.news reported recently, the industry has moved to 20-foot, 5MWh+ containers as the standard product. CEA said that that 20-foot units are much more energy dense and easier to ship, and are cheaper to the extent that the advantages of smaller modular blocks have been overshadowed.
Its latest report did not, however, provide actual BESS pricing figures as previous ones did. In February, it said that the prices paid by US buyers of a 20-foot DC container from China in 2024 would fall 18% to US$148 per kWh, down from US$180 per kWh in 2023.
That trend will reverse in the next few years, with small increases in price from 2025 onwards. Prices are expected to increase nominally in 2025, as shown in the chart above, before jumping more substantially in 2026. That larger increase is primarily down to new tariffs imposed by the US on battery products from China, which CEA previously said would increase BESS prices by 11-16%.
However, the firm’s chart implies the price will be relatively flat from 2026-2028.
In a separate paper, ‘ESS Supply, Technology and Policy Report’, CEA said that smaller lithium-ion battery OEMs and non-China companies are struggling in the current highly competitive environment and the slowdown in electric vehicle (EV) demand.
It highlighted several gigafactory projects in the US and elsewhere that have been postponed or scaled back, without naming the companies involved. One supplier’s CEO and CTO resigned and saw layoffs of 25% and 12% of employees in Q4 2023 and Q1 2024 respectively. Elsewhere, gigafactory projects have faced significant roadblocks in Clarksville, Kentucky and South Carolina.
Republican lawmakers are still pushing to impose punitive measures on major Chinese lithium original equipment manufacturers CATL and Gotion for alleged human rights abuses in their supply chains, which they deny.

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Located around 23 km east of Stawell in the Wimmera region of Victoria, Australia, the project is expected to begin construction in the second quarter of 2025, ahead of energisation in 2027. It will cover 10 hectares of land.
It is expected to cost around AUS$250 million (US$170 million) and will store energy and release it into the grid during peak demand via a connection at Bulgana Terminal Station. This will support the integration of more renewable energy into Victoria’s electricity network and put downward pressure on power prices.
Victoria previously established energy storage targets of at least 2.6GW of energy storage capacity by 2030 and at least 6.3GW by 2035. At the time, it was dubbed as one of the most ambitious targets globally.
This energy storage target complements its existing renewable energy generation target, which aims to have 95% renewable energy in the energy mix by 2035.
Victoria’s minister for energy and resources, Lily D’Ambrosio, said streamlining the planning approval process for projects such as the Joel Joel BESS will be crucial for grid stability as Victoria’s coal-fired power plants begin to close.
Kilkenny added: “This streamlined process allows us to bring good renewable projects like battery storage systems online faster so that we can provide more Victorians with cheaper and cleaner energy.”
ACEnergy sees voluntary planning agreement rejected in New South Wales
Readers of Energy-Storage.news may be aware that ACEnergy recently saw its voluntary planning agreement for its 250MW/1,100MWh Yanco BESS rejected by the Leeton Shire Council in New South Wales.
For the project’s construction, ACEnergy will be required to pay a development levy for the project, as specified in Leeton Shire Council’s Section 7.12 Plan. This levy amounts to 1% of the development cost, so in this instance, ACEnergy will be required to pay the council AUS$2.5 million.
In a bid to reduce this amount ACEnergy, the developer submitted a voluntary planning agreement. This deal would have seen the company pay AUS$730,000 over five years – 29% of the traditional agreement.
The council rejected the proposal, stating that the 1% developer contributions would significantly help in funding public facilities and addressing long-term development pressures. The council also considered the figure to be a “reasonable amount relative to the size of the project.”

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(Source: Encore Renewable Energy)

Encore Renewable Energy has commenced construction on a 3.6 MW solar array located in Constable, N.Y. 

Constable Solar is the company’s first solar project in New York State and part of nearly 90 MW of solar and energy storage currently under development by Encore in the state. Under New York’s NY-Sun Initiative and VDER program, NYSEG will compensate Encore for the electricity produced from the new array.

“With New York’s ambitious clean energy goals and an evolving energy supply market that is finding renewables to be an increasingly more cost effective form of energy production, the demand for solar has never been higher,” says Chad Farrell, founder and co-CEO of Encore Renewable Energy. 

“Utilities are the tip of the spear when it comes to broader clean energy adoption, and delivering projects like this in partnership with NYSEG is critical for meeting increased energy demand at affordable costs for ratepayers.”

A partnership is in place with J&R Pierce Family Farm, located in West Chazy, N.Y., for sheep to rotationally graze the site to meet the vegetation management standards required for solar production. 

Construction has commenced, with survey and civil activities under way and provided by GreenSpark Solar.

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