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Two battery storage projects in Solano and Sonoma counties large enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes are part of a big bet California is making to store power generated by alternative sources and meet its goal of a zero-emissions energy grid.

In Vacaville, NextEra Energy Resources Development LLC plans to build the Corby Energy Storage project at the southwest corner of the Interstate 80 and Midway Road interchange at the north end of the city.

Meanwhile, Strata Clean Energy LLC plans to construct the North Bay Energy Storage project at the shuttered Adobe Creek Golf Club next to a Pacific Gas & Electric substation on the east outskirts of Petaluma.

The Business Journal recently reported on sizable battery-storage projects at the U.S. Coast Guard’s major West Coast training facility southwest of Petaluma and at Dario Sattui’s Castello di Amorosa winery in Napa Valley.

But what’s different about the Corby and North Bay storage projects is that they are part of a statewide race to shore up the power demands of the grid, rather than primarily serve the needs of a given property.

Pipeline of big batteries

The Corby project is one of nine battery energy storage system, or BESS, procurement agreements announced in late January by PG&E, whose service area is Northern and Central California, and the only one of the large batteries in the North Bay.

All nine projects would provide a total of 1,600 megawatts (1.6 gigawatts) of battery output and are intended to come online by the end of 2024.

The effort is part of the California Public Utilities Commission’s decision last June that all the state’s electrical utilities, called load-serving entities, bring on line 11.5 gigawatts of new power sources with low or no emissions of greenhouse gases between 2023 and 2026: 2 gigawatts by August 2023, 6 more gigawatts by mid-2024, 1.5 additional gigawatts by mid-2025, and the remaining 2 extra gigawatts by mid-2026.

The timing is intended to coincide with the planned retirement of Southern California natural gas plans and the 2025 decommissioning of the state’s last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon.

PG&E said Corby and the eight other new BESS contracts would bring its battery storage to over 3.3 gigawatts in 2024, including 600 megawatts from three storage projects turned on last year.

On a similar track, Southern California Edison last fall said is planned to reach 2.3 gigawatts of storage in 2022, plus about 5 gigawatts of demand-easing output available from private BESSes.

“California is going to be putting increasing amounts of grid reliability on very fast deployment of energy storage,”said Jason Burwen, vice president of energy storage for the American Clean Power Association, a trade group for around 640 wind, solar, storage and transmission companies. He was CEO of the Energy Storage Association until its merger at the beginning of this year.

One of the potential challenges with CPUC’s clean-grid-transition timeline in the near term, noted by the California Energy Commission in a feasibility study released last fall, is the supply chain.

But Burwen said the challenge currently is more cost than availability.

“It’s less about folks able to get batteries but the near-term bidding up of the pricing for batteries for the rapid expansion and buildout,” he told the Business Journal.

While the pricing for the PG&E and other utility battery contracts aren’t disclosed, Burwen said via government and private sources, a ballpark estimate of what these large BESSes cost can be possible, according to Burwen. The installed cost per kilowatt-hour is roughly $300-$350, varying depending on what sourcing connections the provider has and other costs such as site preparation and grid connection. So a four-hour battery could cost $1,200 per kilowatt of capacity.

Before the global supply chain challenges that have driven up the cost of many goods, pricing for battery storage had been declining precipitously, Burwen said. It declined about 90% in the 2010s, at a rate of about 5%-10% a year.

“In 2022 it will be interesting to see what the numbers are saying on whether this short-term competitiveness changes that price trajectory,” he said.

Solano project needs a zoning change

The Vacaville project would be a 125-megawatt BESS and has a target go-live time frame of June of that year, according to the utility’s news release.

A spokesperson for Florida-based NextEra Energy would only confirm that the Vacaville project was planned to go operational in 2024 and that it was in the city permitting process.

The company already contracts for net production of up to 277 megawatts of wind power from three arrays of turbines in east Solano, according to regulatory filings.

The proposed Vacaville battery site is currently zoned for housing and job-creating uses and would need a zoning change for the proposed use, according to Peyman Behvand, city planning director. A merit hearing before the City Council on such a change is tentatively set for late March or early April.

Petaluma big battery project

The North Bay Energy Storage project located at the former Adobe golf course just outside Petaluma currently is the only utility-scale BESS in the California Independent System Operator’s queue for those two counties, as storage elsewhere has been delayed, according to Sonoma Clean Power, a community choice aggregator for energy in that region.

First reported by the Argus-Courier in late 2020, the project is working toward being able to start serving the grid in mid-2024.

But that timing ultimately will be determined by the Sonoma County permitting process for the site, according to Will Mitchell, West Coast vice president of business development for Strata Clean Energy. The North Carolina-based company has been finding out what county requirements are expected before submitting a project application, he said.

Originally envisioned to supply up to 100 megawatts, a portion of which could be contracted to Sonoma Clean Power, Strata has been exploring whether electricity demand in the region calls for a bigger battery, Mitchell said.

Like most other big BESSes being installed in California, the Petaluma system is designed for a four-hour discharge at maximum output, but that doesn’t mean that’s only as long as it can operate, Mitchell said. For example, all 100 megawatts could power 100,000 homes for four hours, 50,000 for eight or 25,000 for 12.

“A battery is the Swiss Army knife of the grid,” he said.

It can operate like the mainly natural gas “peaker” plants now, varying output based on grid demand. So a BESS can ramp up discharge during an unexpected or planned outage, or when clouds or storms cut solar output. But while natural gas plants take 10 minutes to 2 hours to ramp up, BESSes can do so in the blink of an eye, Mitchell noted.

Strata turned on another utility-scale BESS in Southern California last year and has one planned among those nine PG&E projects statewide. The company also has other zero-emissions power plants across the country.

The company decided to pursue a utility battery in the North Bay because it saw a gap in the green energy mix, Mitchell said.

“It’s no secret that California is flush with solar, and solar not attached to batteries is not much value to the grid anymore,” he said. “And no gas or coal plants will be approved in the North Bay anymore.”

https://www.northbaybusinessjournal.com/article/article/2-large-sonoma-solano-large-battery-projects-are-part-of-california-energy/

https://ctesonomacounty.org/sparkaward/

As The LIME Foundation continues to grow and evolve, so does our team! Our Founder, Letitia Hanke, has a special announcement:

“I am so excited to announce the new President of The LIME Foundation, Marco Guerra. Marco is ready to lead us on our journey and he shares the same deep passion that I have for LIME. There are exciting times in store for LIME in the next couple of months and I can’t think of a better person to lead. Please welcome Marco Guerra!”

– Letitia Hanke, Founder/Executive Director

“When not volunteering my time to the LIME Foundation, I serve as the Branch Manager in the Santa Rosa, CA office for RoundPoint Mortgage Servicing Corporation.  Business development, coaching, loan origination and production are among my chief responsibilities. With 32 years of mortgage lending experience, I have seen numerous market cycles and utilize this experience to help my friends, clients and referral partners navigate today’s mortgage market opportunities.

As the saying goes ‘knowledge is power,’ I believe in empowering individuals with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions for themselves and their families – thereby helping them maximize their own aspirations and achieve more – a shared belief with the LIME Foundation.
I studied at the University of California, Davis and reside in wonderful Sonoma County California with my wife and family. My favorite ways to relax are cooking for friends and family, and traveling to see all the beauty and culture this world provides.  These are pastimes that I attribute to my amazing parents.  As the son of a full-time working mother and a Korean War veteran father, I grew up with a reverence and a calling for service to others.  This dogma was further honed through my 12 years of parochial school.  To ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ and ‘assisting those less fortunate’ are always in the forefront of all that I do.

This is why I was so impressed with Letitia Hanke and the mission of the LIME Foundation.  From my first discussion with Letitia 5 years ago, I have been an ardent supporter of the programs and the LIME Foundation team.  One of our first fund raisers was to convert a client appreciation event into a Chili Cook-Off, in order to help bring awareness and funds to the Foundation’s valuable programs.  The event gained popularity each year and was so much fun to host.  From that point, my advocacy for the LIME Foundation continued to grow and I was enthusiastic to join the Board of Directors approximately 3 years ago.

While serving on the Board of Directors, I have seen first-hand the level of commitment and dedication to our youth by everyone involved.  From such a small core team many lives have been forever changed – Young adults have started careers and inspired others in their families and communities to do the same;  Elderly adults have learned how to better care for themselves nutritionally and new skills to maintain their physical and mental health; and, those with self-esteem issues, or have been bullied, have found an outlet to express themselves through the arts.

For these reasons, and many more, that I am honored and humbled to have been elected to serve as the 2022-2024 Lime Foundation Board President.  I do not take this stewardship lightly.  I look forward to continuing the strong tradition set forth previously of compassionately listening to diverse points of view, pulling from shared experiences, and challenging paradigms while at the same time bringing others together to collectively achieve more.  Those tenets have served the LIME Foundation well.  I strive to do the same.

‘Live well by doing good; treat others with integrity and respect; love with all of your heart; and have fun along the way.'”

– Marco Guerra, President

Dominican University of California has received a national award for “institutional transformation” in recognition of the university’s work creating partnerships that deepen student civic learning and strengthen local communities.

Dominican has been awarded Campus Compact’s Richard Guarasci Award for Institutional Transformation. The award recognizes four-year or graduate institutions that have successfully implemented institution-wide efforts to address issues of public concern by aligning teaching, research, practice, and values in service of the common good.

Dominican has, over the past decade, taken comprehensive and sustainable action to ensure community engagement is deeply embedded in its curriculum and programs.

This includes:

• Developing the Dominican Experience, an educational model grounded in high-impact practices with community engagement as one of four tenets;
• Adopting institution-wide learning outcomes with a category for practice of civic skills and social responsibility;
• Redesigning the curriculum, comprising revisions to every major, minor, including a new Social Justice major, and the general education program, which now contains a category for Civic Knowledge and Engagement;
• Founding the Center for Community Engagement, whose advisory board has defined effective practices in community-engaged teaching and learning for the campus and developed a Civic Action plan that is currently being implemented;
• Creating campus and community partnerships to advance equity work both on and off campus.

Community voice, community priorities, and community-based teaching and learning will remain institutional priorities, President Nicola Pitchford said.

“Our university is uniquely positioned as an engine of greater social equity, not only through opening educational opportunities to a student body comprising many from diverse and formerly excluded populations, but also through our capacity to produce research and knowledge in partnership with local communities,” she said.

“We will continue to build on a decade of intentional, institution-wide reorientation around the insight that all students, and especially underrepresented students, learn best (and we teach best) in contexts of applied problem-solving.”

The 2021-2022 academic year marks the 17th year that Dominican students have served as advocates for equity, working alongside community partners and community residents through the university’s Service-Learning program.

“We value our many reciprocal partnerships — and a shared commitment to social justice and equity — that inspire our work,” President Pitchford said. “The guiding objective for this work is clear: to challenge systemic racial and economic injustice through community engagement and civic knowledge, to prepare students for fulfilling careers and meaningful lives, to see our campus and community thrive.”

Each semester, about 300 students participate in service-learning-designated courses, engaging with non-profit organizations and schools. Last semester, for example, students connected and contributed to the greater community through 20 service-learning courses. Much of the work focused on addressing issues in marginalized communities throughout Marin County that have been exacerbated by the pandemic. The work is particularly urgent, as the COVID-19 pandemic is stretching the resources of many community and non-profit organizations.

Dominican’s Center for Community Engagement, led by Executive Director Julia van der Ryn, advances the university’s commitment to community partnerships, providing support and advocacy for the greater community and in turn generating meaningful connections and social justice education for our students.

“Grounding and connecting academic learning with relevant and pressing issues is crucial in our current climate,” van der Ryn said. “Community-engaged learning that intentionally focuses on the larger contexts and social issues that impact people’s lives, that values lived experience and knowledge of our students and community members –– is education for social change.”

The crux of the university’s transformation is its signature program, the Dominican Experience.

Developed over the past decade, The Dominican Experience is an educational pathway that provides undergraduates with access to personalized coaching – including academic and career advising and peer mentors – and the opportunity to engage with the community through service-learning, internships, and fieldwork. Students also work with faculty mentors to develop original research or creative projects and, through digital portfolios, showcase personal growth, academic accomplishments, and professional skills.

Dominican has 2,089 undergraduate and graduate students. One-third of the undergraduate students are Pell-eligible, 68% identify as BIPOC, and more than 25% are the first in their family to attend college. Dominican’s graduation rates have improved more than 14% since 2016. Both the four-year and six-year rates are well above the national averages.

In the last five years, Dominican ranked #10 in the nation for early college graduate career earnings; #11 among 578 selective private colleges for social mobility; and #1 in the nation for institutional transformation.

Campus Compact is a national coalition of colleges and universities committed to supporting institutions in fulfilling their public purposes by deepening their ability to improve community life and to educate students for civic and social responsibility. The Richard Guarasci Award for Institutional Transformation is presented as part of Campus Compact’s Impact Awards, which recognize the outstanding work of individuals and institutions in pursuit of the public purposes of higher education.

https://www.dominican.edu/news/news-listing/national-award-cites-commitment-student-civic-learning