US Power Plant Energy Storage Project

AES just completed the first half of Bellefield, which will become the largest solar + storage facility in the US. The 1,000-megawatt (MW) Bellefield 1 project in Kern County, California, includes 500 MW of solar and 500 MW of four-hour battery storage, all under a 15-year contract with Amazon.

Together, solar and battery storage account for 81% of the expected total capacity additions, with solar making up over 50% of the increase. Solar. In 2024, generators added a record 30 GW of utility-scale solar to the U.S. grid, accounting for 61% of capacity additions last year.

"The 1,000-megawatt (MW) Bellefield 1 project in Kern County, California, includes 500 MW of solar and 500 MW of four-hour battery storage, all under a 15-year contract with Amazon. When the full 2,000 MW Bellefield project is done, it will be the biggest solar-plus-storage installation in the country."

This amount represents an almost 30% increase from 2024 when 48.6 GW of capacity was installed, the largest capacity installation in a single year since 2002. Together, solar and battery storage account for 81% of the expected total capacity additions, with solar making up over 50% of the increase. Solar.

It reached full capacity in January 2024, just before its official inauguration. The project's impressive scale was captured by the Landsat-9 satellite on January 12, 2024. The Edwards Sanborn Solar and Energy Storage project is the largest of its kind in the US and the world.

It can generate 875 megawatts of solar power and store nearly 3.3 gigawatt-hours of energy in batteries. It can also connect to the grid with a 1.3 gigawatt interconnection capacity. This means the project can supply enough clean electricity to power about 238,000 homes and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 320,000 tons annually.