Engie has secured a power purchase agreement for 100 MWac of a 255 MW solar plant, with New Braunfels Utilities. The plant is expected to come online in June 2020.
Image by: U.S. Department of Energy
By John Weaver
Lazard recently published levelized costs of electricity showing that wind and solar power were the cheapest sources of electricity in the USA, unsubsidized. When we mix in an a tax credit, some southern sunshine, and the Texas power grid’s hunger for cheap daytime electricity – we’re going to see peak electricity pricing savings, and heavy volumes of solar to follow along.
Engie has signed a 15-year power purchase agreement with New Braunfels Utilities (NBU) for 100 MWac from the 255 MW Long Draw Solar facility located in Borden County, Texas. NBU said they signed the 100 MW deal at a price below 2.5¢/kWh.
The available public documentation on the project gave no specific project details, and suggested a much smaller, 150 MWac project as recently as December 2017.
NBU says that with this purchase, 40% of their electricity will come from renewable sources: wind, hydro, landfill gases, and of course solar power.
NBU and other public power entities in the state worked together to review a diverse mix of proposals from 37 companies, which offered more than 100 types of solar projects and more than 700 proposed options, it noted. The group originally announced plans to 500 MW worth of solar farms in September.
The Texas solar power market got started slowly. However, with price reductions and aging fossil infrastructure, the state has recently moved up aggressively in rankings to fifth in terms of total volume deployed, 4th overall market scale in 2017, and projections of being in 3rd place over the next five years. – per SEIA.
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