The US Department of the Interior (DOI) announced that the 457-MW Palen solar project residing in California's Riverside County has become completely operational.
The developer of this project is EDF Renewables North America. The US unit of French energy company EDF was given the authority by US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 2018 to build the plant and also construct a 7-mile single circuit 230 kV interconnection transmission line to deliver power through the Southern California Edison Red Bluff Substation (see 500 MW PV Project Plan For California Approved).
Spread across 3,478 acres of land, the project was built in 4 phases starting from December 2020. The fifth phase was reserved for a 50 MW battery storage system. The project will generate enough electricity to meet the demands of about 116,000 homes. Some of the plant's power off-takers are Southern California Edison, Shell Energy North America and CleanPowerSF, operated by San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
Meanwhile, BLM is reviewing further applications for about 64 clean energy projects, which to be spread across the public lands in the western US. Going forward, this could add over 41 GW of renewable power capacity to the grid.