8minute signs 15-year PPA for 400MW solar-storage project in USA 

8minute Solar Energy (8minute) has executed a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Clean Power Alliance (CPA) which involves the 400 MW (300 MWac) Rexford 1 Solar & Storage Center in California, USA. The facility includes 180 MW/540 megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy storage, which means it will reliably deliver renewable energy to the grid day or night or on cloudy days.

Dr. Tom Buttgenbach, Founder and CEO of 8minute, said: “We are proud to partner with Clean Power Alliance, the largest clean choice energy provider in California. Our new generation of solar-plus-storage power plants are the future of energy – replacing an aging fleet of fossil fuel power plants with more economical and cleaner solutions and creating good jobs when they are needed most. This partnership is yet another example of California taking the lead on next-generation technology, and we expect to build a lot more solar and energy storage centers across the United States.”

The Rexford 1 Solar & Storage Center will be constructed on private, low-productivity disturbed farmland in Tulare County. Construction, which will begin in early 2022, will create over 400 well-paying union construction jobs, and approximately one thousand indirect jobs, in addition to contributing more than US$200 million to the local economy over the life of the project. The investment, construction, and operational inflows to Tulare County represent a huge economic boost for decades to come.

When the project becomes operational in 2023, it will provide enough energy for over 370,000 Californians, making it not only the largest solar-plus-storage project for CPA, but also the largest for any community choice aggregator (CCA) to date. The plant will offset about 600,000 tonnes of CO2 annually, or the equivalent of planting 12,000 trees every single day, for ten years in a row.