Edwards & Sanborn Solar, largest solar + storage in US completed

The largest solar + storage project in the United States, Edwards & Sanborn Solar + Energy Storage has been completed. Located in Kern County, California, the project begun construction in December 2020 and took over 1,000 craftworkers who contributed to the project with more than 1 million hours of injury-free labor and a safety award by the California Association of General Contractors. The project is located on land stretching over 4,600 acres. It includes over 1.9 million solar modules produced by First Solar. Additionally, more than 110,000 lithium-ion battery modules were used on the energy storage facility.

The Edwards & Sanborn Solar capacity

The project generates 875 MWDC of solar energy in total. It also has 3,287 MWh of energy storage with a total interconnection capacity of 1,300 MW. The project was undertaken in phases with phase one comprising of 971 MW of energy storage, enough capacity to supply 971,000 homes for approximately 4 hours on a single charge. Further, the phases became operational throughout 2022 and 2023. The project supplies power to the city of San Jose, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and the Clean Power Alliance. Additionally, Southern California Edison and Starbucks, among others. Furthermore, the project uses LG Chem, Samsung, and BYD batteries.

The project team

The project team included Terra-Gen who are the developers and Mortenson who was the full engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor on both the solar and energy storage scopes. Mortenson is one of the top contractors in power with industry-leading experience in wind, solar, transmission and distribution, repowering and battery energy storage. The project is Mortenson’s 78th solar project and 11th energy storage project.

The total cost for the solar and energy storage project has been estimated to be over US$2billion. “Now fully operational, this facility is a transformational project in the industry and is providing resiliency to the grid. Furthermore, the Mortenson team was tasked with an extremely difficult goal to build this project. They proved to be the right partner for the job. We are excited to bring Edwards & Sanborn online. It will greatly benefit the people of California,” said Brian Gorda, VP of engineering at Terra-Gen.

“Mortenson is honored to help Terra-Gen deliver the Edwards & Sanborn project and provide the region with clean, resilient power. I’m proud of the world-class facility our team designed, built and commissioned for Terra-Gen,” said Mark Donahue, senior VP at Mortenson.

Other Solar + battery projects in the region

Elsewhere, in Arizona, California and Nevada, 3GW total in solar and battery storage capacity has been planned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The department released a draft environmental impact statement for the 700-MW Libra, 400-MW Rough Hat Clark County and 200-MW Dry Lake East Energy Center solar photovoltaic (PV) projects in Nevada. Additionally, the Rough Hat Clark County park is set to be paired with 700 MW of battery energy storage. The Dry Lake East will be equipped with a battery energy storage of 600 MW. In California, a Notice to Proceed is due to be released in the coming days for the 44-MW Camino solar project, also in Kern County.