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. When the full 2,000 MW Bellefield project is done, it will be the biggest solar-plus-storage installation in the country.
“Completing the first 1,000 MW of Bellefield demonstrates how rapidly solar and storage can be deployed to meet the growing energy demand of data centers,” said AES CEO Andrés Gluski.
AES has locked in deals with “major global hyperscalers” – think tech giants like Amazon and Meta – for more than 10 gigawatts of clean power. Bellefield is a big part of that.
To speed up the build and make it safer, AES used its own robot helper, Maximo. This AI-powered robotic system helped crews install solar panels faster and with more precision.
Once the full 2 GW project is online, Bellefield will generate enough electricity to power the equivalent of around 467,000 homes annually. It’s expected to prevent more than 1 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually and boost air quality in the region.
Construction of Bellefield 1 created more than 700 union jobs, and AES says Bellefield 2, which is expected to wrap in 2026, will create around 1,000 union jobs at peak.
Top comment by Solarman1.0
"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."
I find solar PV energy policy sorely lacking in scope. Early on in Riverside California from 2003 to 2012 several large scale utility projects were in the process some survived, some failed and some early concentrated heliostat projects failed to move forward, were bought by others and solar PV was installed instead. One of the first big projects was the McCoy solar PV farm. It was initially a four phase 10,000 acre solar farm with 1GWp generation capacity. Only 1/4 of the site was built and today it is still at 250MWp. NOW it is possible to start upgrading this site with First Solar PV panels, installed on single axis trackers at a 1.5 to 1 D.C. to A.C. energy output ratio. Have actual 4.5GWh/day to 7.5GWh a day. The site would still have several thousand acres to construct a 5-10GWh redox flow battery to allow daily solar power stored in the flow battery for dispatch overnight. Yes, Virginia, solar PV dispatched at night. CIP on old solar PV farms is not being performed as part of the overall grid energy mix.
AES says it will start recognizing revenue from Bellefield 1 later this year, right on schedule.
Read more: $14B in EV, renewable projects scrapped as tax credit fears grow
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