According to Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory (LBNL), nearly 100 solar and wind projects totaling just over 2.6 GW have been paired with storage in the U.S. While a small percentage of the nearly 100 GW of solar and over 120 GW of wind installed in the U.S., there has been growing interest in pairing renewable generation projects with battery storage. Nearly 860 additional hybrid projects totaling 165 GW of wind and/or solar capacity paired with battery storage are currently in capacity queues across the U.S. with over 75% of these queued projects planned to be online by the end of 2023. In 2020, 35% of solar projects and 6% of wind projects in the U.S. were proposed to include a storage component. In California, this number is much higher, with 89% of solar projects and 37% of wind projects proposed with a storage component due to a combination of the state’s energy policies, as well as the arbitrage opportunities for storage resulting from the variation in power prices from high penetration of solar photovoltaics (PV) on the grid. While not all of these queued projects will reach commercial operation, it is clear that interest in hybrid projects is growing.
While most projects to-date have been predominantly solar + storage, with some wind + storage projects also in the mix, some recent renewables + storage projects have combined wind, solar, and storage components into one project. This Renewables Insight focuses on operational and announced wind + solar + storage projects, the motivation behind projects that combine these three components, and the outlook for these hybrid generation projects.