(Bloomberg) -- Nevada may be four years away from hosting one of America’s largest solar farms equipped with batteries.
8minute Solar Energy LLC is planning a massive 475-megawatt solar array with a 540 megawatt-hour lithium-ion storage system north of Las Vegas, according to an emailed statement. The California-based developer says it will be the largest solar-plus-storage projects ever built in the state.
Clean-power companies are racing to develop solar projects with batteries capable of providing grids with power after sundown. A key reason is more and more states -- including Nevada -- have committed to ban fossil fuels from power generation over the next several decades, but they’ll need more than intermittent solar and wind power to do it. Solar complemented by energy storage can help.
It helps that battery prices have fallen sharply. Plus, in some instances it’s cheaper to build a solar project with batteries than a new gas-fired power plant, including in parts of the U.S. Southwest.
8minute’s Southern Bighorn Solar & Storage Center is expected to begin construction in 2022 and be operational the following year if approved by the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada. It would be the fourth solar project developed on the Moapa River Indian Reservation.
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