Located mostly on Bureau of Land Management land, Desert Quartzite is expected to generate enough electricity to meet the consumption needs of more than 163,000 average California homes.
Desert Quartzite, a 300 MW / 600 MWh solar-plus-storage project located mostly on Federal lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), in Riverside County, California, is operational.
Stressing the important role of energy storage in providing clean energy “even in the absence of sunlight,” Devon Muto, vice president, West Development at EDF Renewables said, “we are particularly proud of our safety practices which resulted in zero recordable incidents during the two-year construction phase of the project.”
The Desert Quartzite solar project was approved by the BLM in January 2020, and represents a capital investment of $1 billion that created more than 450 construction jobs. The project was initially developed by First Solar in 2019, but the solar company sold its interest in the utility-scale project to EDF Renewables in 2020, according to BLM documents.
In September 2021, community choice aggregator Clean Power Associates signed a 15-year power purchase agreement to purchase power from Desert Quartzite.
The facility is expected to generate enough electricity to meet the consumption needs of more than 163,000 average California homes, which is the equivalent to avoiding over 669,000 metric tons of carbon emissions annually. This represents the greenhouse gas emissions from more than 145,000 passenger vehicles driven over the course of one year.
The BLM manages over 245 million acres of public land mainly in 12 western states, including Alaska. To date, BLM has permitted more than 25 GW of clean energy projects with a total capacity of over 33 GW, which is enough to power about 15 million homes. This includes solar, wind and geothermal projects as well as gen-tie lines on public lands that are essential for connecting clean energy generation projects on both federal and non-federal lands to the grid. BLM also issued a final Renewable Energy Rule that intends to lower consumer energy costs and the cost of developing solar and wind projects, improve project application processes, create jobs, and incentivize developers to continue responsibly developing solar and wind projects on public lands.
EDF Renewables is an independent power producer and service provider with 35 years of expertise in renewable energy. Its North American portfolio consists of 18 GW of developed projects and 14.6 GW under service contracts.
