While full details of PPA arrangements do not appear to have been made public, AES said that Amazon will be the “primary purchaser” of energy generated by the projects. The renewable energy will power Amazon facilities and business operations in California.

Also this week, solar and wind developer Scout Clean Energy said that it has signed a PPA with CleanPowerSF, a Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) energy supplier operated by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) for a wind-plus-storage power plant in Merced County.

California’s largest DC-coupled solar-plus-storage project

The AES Corporation projects are Baldy Mesa, featuring 150MW of solar PV generation capacity and a 75MW/300MWh battery energy storage system (BESS), and the smaller Silver Peak, which is 50MW of solar PV with 25MW/100MWh BESS.

Built adjacent to one another, the plants, which AES will operate, both connect to the transmission grid via utility Southern California Edison’s (SCE’s) Roadway Substation in Adelanto.

AES Corporation claimed the 826-acre Baldy Mesa project is California’s largest DC-coupled solar-plus-storage plant to date, while the developer-independent power producer (IPP) is also collaborating with Amazon on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning software to enhance and optimise its operation based on grid and market signals.

The inauguration event was attended by AES and Amazon representatives as well as the Mayor of Adelanto, Gabriel Reyes, California ISO Board Member Mary Leslie, county and state-level officials, as well as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) union.

CCAs have signed 14GW of clean energy contracts to date

Scout Clean Energy announced yesterday (23 October) that CleanPowerSF will buy energy from Gonzaga Ridge, which will feature 147.5MW of wind power generation and a 50MW, 4-hour duration (200MWh) BESS.

The project is scheduled to go into commercial operation in May 2026 and is a redevelopment of an existing wind farm at the same site in Pacheco State Park. The repowering project was announced in 2021, replacing the Pacheco Pass Wind Farm which had an 18.4MW generation capacity, with Gonzaga Ridge. Scout Clean Energy purchased the site in 2018 from original owner International Turbine Research.

Scout Clean Energy claimed 378 tonnes of turbine blades in place at the older wind farm will be recycled into around 360,000 pounds of concrete additives, thereby preventing the materials from going into landfills.

California community choice energy suppliers like offtaker CleanPowerSF are programmes set up to enable customers to buy energy from solar and wind across transmission and distribution wires owned and operated by the state’s three investor-owned utility (IOU) companies, which in this case is Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E).

As such, SFPUC’s CleanPowerSF programme and other CCAs are becoming prolific buyers of clean energy capacity and energy storage services.

With the Gonzaga Ridge deal, CleanPowerSF has now signed contracts for a cumulative 600MW of wind, solar and geothermal capacity, and more than 300MW of energy storage contracts.

Earlier this month, a group of four CCAs announced the signing of 15-year contracts with developer and project owner Clearway for 393.5MW of California solar and 171MW/648MWh of battery storage, as reported by sister site PV Tech.

The CCAs: Central Coast Community Energy (3CE), the Clean Power Alliance (CPA), Peninsula Clean Energy (PCE) and Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SVCE), said in a statement that to date, groups such as theirs have signed US$25 billion of clean energy contracts, representing 14GW since the first CCA was founded in 2016.