TotalEnergies has started commercial operations of Danish Fields and Cottonwood, two utility-scale solar farms with integrated battery storage in south-east Texas, US.
Danish Fields is TotalEnergies’ largest solar farm in the US, with a capacity of 720MWp (megawatt peak) and 1.4m ground-mounted photovoltaic (PV) panels. The project also features a 225 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery storage system supplied by Saft, the battery subsidiary of TotalEnergies.
According to TotalEnergies, 70% of Danish’s solar capacity has been contracted through long-term corporate power purchase agreements (CPPAs) and the remaining 30% will support the decarbonisation of its industrial plants in the US Gulf Coast region.
The second solar farm, Cottonwood, has a capacity of 455MWp with more than 847,000 ground-mounted PV panels. The site will also feature 225MWh of battery storage supplied by Saft.
TotalEnergies has signed additional CPPAs to supply power to LyondellBasell and Saint-Gobain from Cottonwood, scheduled for commissioning in 2025.
TotalEnergies senior vice-president of renewables Olivier Jouny commented: “Thanks to these projects, we are delighted to take another step in delivering our strategy across the entire value chain, from power generation to customer delivery, in order to achieve our profitability target of 12% return on average capital employed in our integrated power business.”
Jouny also cited the “fast-growing ERCOT market” in reference to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Power Technology’s parent company, GlobalData, reports that Texas is emerging as the leading market for energy storage in the US.
In 2023, the Texas Legislature passed the HB1500 bill, establishing a new transmission interconnection cost allowance for generation facilities, including storage projects, seeking to connect to the state’s transmission system.
TotalEnergies aims to achieve a combined gross capacity of 10GW in the US by 2025 and more than 25GW by 2030, recently adding 1.5GW of flexible power production capacity with the acquisition of three gas-fired power plants in Texas.
