Our stop story this month is that Blackstone Infrastructure Partners has completed a US$1bn equity investment in Invenergy Renewables Holdings to support its rapidly expanding business.
Invenergy will leverage this additional investment to support the continued growth of the company in the US and around the world, as well as its portfolio of projects.
This includes some of the world's largest solar and land-based wind farms, advanced energy storage facilities, offshore wind projects, high-voltage direct current interregional transmission lines, clean hydrogen initiatives, solar panel manufacturing, and a growing community solar business through its Reactivate venture.
The investment builds on Blackstone’s nearly US$3bn investment in Invenergy in 2021 and 2022.
BLM has given the green light for construction
The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has given the green light for construction to begin on a second large-scale battery storage system at Desert Sunlight, a solar PV plant on lands it manages in California.
The Bureau said that it had issued a Notice to Proceed on the Sunlight Storage II Battery Energy Storage System project in California’s Riverside County. Now the notice has been issued, the project will be completed by NextEra Energy Resources.
The project will comprise a battery energy storage system of up to 300MW output. While megawatt-hour figures have not been provided, it appears likely it will be a four-hour duration resource as is increasingly the standard for large-scale BESS connected to the grid in California. It will be added to 230MW of previously installed battery storage which was brought online in August last year and co-located with Desert Sunlight, a flagship renewable energy project which itself came online in 2015.
2 GW Bellefield project
The AES Corporation announced the acquisition of the 2 GW Bellefield project, which is currently in late-stage development, and is the largest permitted solar-plus-storage project in the United States. The project, located in Kern County, California, where AES1 already has significant operations, includes two phases, each with 500 MW of solar and up to 500 MW of four-hour duration battery energy storage.
RWE has brought its biggest utility-scale BESS project
RWE has brought its biggest utility-scale BESS project in the US closer to the start of commercial operations. The company said that its project, called Fifth Standard, has now been connected to the California Independent System Operator grid. The 137MW battery energy storage system is a 4-hour duration asset and will be paired with a 150MW solar PV power plant, currently under construction and expected to be completed by August.
Powers Radian solar project
Finally Intersect Powers Radian solar project in Brown County, Texas, has achieved commercial operation. The project created more than 500 construction jobs and generates 320MW of solar energy, enough to power more than 114,000 homes.
They were the top stories from the US renewables market in June, if you enjoyed the video please give it a like, comment, share or even better all 3! If you have a renewable energy project coming up, CMC provide engineering, construction and project management services to help you deliver your project ahead of schedule and under budget, for more information visit www.expertisedelviered.com or reach out to myself directly on LinkedIn. Thank you for watching I’m Eddy Maunder, this has been the Renewables Round Up and I hope to see you again next month.