Aypa Secures $535 Million for California Solar-Storage Hybrid Vidal Project

• Aypa Power raises $535 million to build the 320 MW Vidal solar-plus-storage plant in California, boosting grid reliability and advancing the state’s clean-energy goals.

Aypa Power has locked in a $535 million debt package to kick-start construction of the Vidal solar-plus-storage plant in California’s Mojave Desert—one of the state’s largest single-site hybrids to reach financial close this year.

The Blackstone-backed developer said on Tuesday that the funds will cover a 160 MW photovoltaic array paired with a 160 MW/640 MWh battery system near the Colorado River in eastern San Bernardino County. When it enters service in 2026, the facility will dispatch enough clean power to supply roughly 145,000 homes at peak demand while helping California balance its increasingly solar-heavy grid long after sunset.

Santander Corporate & Investment Banking led the green-loan syndicate as coordinating arranger, working alongside U.S. Bank’s Impact Finance arm and Zions Bancorporation as mandated lead arrangers. Siemens Financial Services and Associated Bank joined as managing agents. The deal underlines growing lender appetite for projects that bundle solar with long-duration storage to earn both energy and capacity revenues.

Marc Atlas, Aypa’s chief financial officer, called the oversubscribed financing “a vote of confidence in our ability to deliver reliable, long-term returns while strengthening California’s grid.” The company, which already operates nearly 1 GW of storage across North America, plans to break ground on Vidal later this year.

Under a long-term power purchase agreement, San Diego Community Power will take Vidal’s electricity, renewable energy certificates, and resource-adequacy products—a contract structure designed to support California’s target of a 100 percent carbon-free power mix by 2045. State regulators now require utilities and community-choice aggregators to back solar with storage to secure evening supply and avoid the rolling blackouts that hit in 2020.

Beyond grid benefits, Aypa estimates the project will inject more than $13.5 million into the local economy and create up to 260 union-backed construction jobs. The developer has also pledged habitat restoration measures and a community-benefit fund for nearby towns along historic Route 66.

Vidal is the first of several California hybrids Aypa expects to finance this year as demand for dispatchable renewables accelerates. Atlas said the company’s pipeline exceeds 15 GW across the United States and Canada, with a growing share of projects combining solar, wind, and multi-hour batteries.