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A new loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy will help finance 200 MW of solar and 285 MW of grid-scale storage on the island.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Loan Programs has made a conditional commitment for a loan guarantee of up to $861 million to finance the construction of solar plus storage and stand-alone storage projects in Puerto Rico.
The project developer and potential borrower, Clean Flexible Energy LLC, is an indirect subsidiary of AES Corporation (AES) and TotalEnergies Holdings USA, Inc. and is managed under a joint venture agreement between the two.
The planned facilities, located in the municipalities of Guayama and Salinas, include two sites comprising 200 MW of solar power co-located with 285 MW of four-hour batteries (1.14 GWh). Two additional stand-alone battery storage sites would have storage capacity not disclosed by the DOE.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Puerto Rico currently has 154 MW of commercial-scale solar power.
The US territory’s distributed solar capacity reached 842 MW in April of this year, while residential storage has reached 1.6 GWh. The consultancy Wood Mackenzie has projected that in the next ten years more than 90% of Puerto Rico’s solar additions will be distributed solar energy.
Puerto Ricos Act 17 requires reaching 40% renewable generation by 2025 - a goal that is currently very difficult to meet - and reaching 60% by 2040 and 100% by 2050. |
