Columbia regulatory authority approves 73MW solar PPA for default power supply

• The General Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia (DCPSC) has approved a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with renewables programmer Invenergy for 73MW of solar power to meet a 5% renewables target for district's default electricity supply.

The contract is the very first of its kind from an utility regulator in the Mid-Atlantic due to the fact that it will certainly act as the Standard Offer Service (SOS) electricity supply lots, which is the electricity supply from utilities to consumers that do pass by different distributors, beginning in December 2024.

Utility companies generally purchase SOS power from wholesale distributors under a competitive bidding procedure managed by the Commission. In this situation, customers under the SOS programme can buy default electrical power generation from Pepco, an energy supplier for virtually 900,000 clients in the District of Columbia and also Maryland, rather than from around 45 other affordable and also unregulated power suppliers.

About 31% of Pepco's complete electrical power supply sales came via the SOS program in 2015. Meanwhile, around 78% of total domestic electrical energy sales in the district additionally came through Pepco's SOS power supply.

The new pilot program was driven by the Commission's instruction to obtain renewable resource via lasting PPAs for energy produced by solar or wind power centers located within the PJM Interconnection (PJM) area.

The agreement with Invenergy includes a levelised pricing agreement for about 154,000 MWh per year. This corresponds to 73MW, or regarding 29% of the PV project's total capacity.

" Today's activity marks another hostile action the Commission is requiring to relocate the District closer to meeting its 2032 100% renewable energy objective, along with the environment modification dedications," claimed Emile Thompson, Commission chair.

" By incorporating the long-lasting renewable resource PPA right into the SOS purchase profile, we are taking direct action to reduce greenhouse gas discharges by advertising the building of new renewable energy generation within the PJM Interconnection grid area. This pilot program is the item of a joint, extensive, and also clear SOS Working Team process."

Thompson additionally kept in mind objectives to take part with the SOS Working Team once again in the future to explore the development of the percentage of SOS lots served by renewable resource PPAs in the close to term.

In Might, Invenergy stated it had attained the milestone of reaching 30GW of tidy energy generation projects over its 20-year existence. It claimed to be the initial privately held energy company to achieve this turning point.

This consists of 6GW of solar across 50 projects and more than 1GW of energy storage space across 18 projects.

Recently Invenergy authorized an agreement with CenterPoint Energy to develop the 130MW Pike Area solar plant in Indiana, while in July, Invenergy introduced it was introducing a green hydrogen project that will be co-located with a solar farm in the United States state of Illinois. The Sauk Valley Hydrogen Project will certainly feature a proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyser from producer Ohmium.

PJM Interconnection's most current capacity public auction for 2023/24 saw 1,868 MW of solar PV acquired, up 25% from the previous public auction, as well as with a significant decrease in costs.