SB Energy readying launch of third pipeline in early 2024; adding storage
SB Energy will start construction on its third 1 GW plus pipeline of solar projects by early next year as it finishes construction on its current 1.3 GW pipeline. The current 1.3 GW under construction is supported by a historic 942 MW PPA announced with Google six months ago, said SB Energy co-CEO Rich Hossfeld in an interview with NPM.
The ongoing projects in Texas: Orion 1, 2 and 3 and Eiffel solar facilities, will see one of the projects commissioned by the end of 2023 and all four projects fully commissioned by the end of summer of 2024, bringing SB Energy’s total operating portfolio to 3 GW. SB Energy commissioned its first 1.7GW in California and Texas in 2021 and 2022.
Orion I, formerly 260 MW Aureola Solar and Orion II, formerly 320 MW Mandorla Solar, executed their interconnection agreements in September 2022. Orion III, formerly 330 MW Halo Solar, executed an IA agreement in August 2022.
SB Energy is also active across CAISO, the Southwest, PJM and MISO, with over 10 GW of solar and storage projects currently under development across these regions. In addition, the company continues to expand its development pipeline via greenfield development, project level and portfolio partnerships with other developers and M&A opportunities.
Hossfeld said they are seeing more project and pipeline M&A opportunities, particularly since 2H22. While some developers and even IPPs are selling projects pre-NTP, the rising costs of interconnection deposits, interest rates, and supply chain costs and complexity of finishing the development of a project to NTP have eliminated a certain subset of buyers.
“This does present an opportunity for someone like SB Energy to step in as a good partner to developers,” said Hossfeld, given SB Energy’s secured domestic supply chain and strong balance sheet supported by the company’s shareholders Ares, who made a USD 615m commitment to SB Energy last year alongside SoftBank.
SB Energy is also adding storage, either through co-located storage at existing assets, and/or standalone storage. Hossfeld said the company is looking at lithium-ion, two-to-four-hour ESS and long-duration six-to-12-hour type solutions.
“The market for storage in ERCOT is more merchant, it is helpful to have generation, but we are tracking development in the Texas legislature,” said Hossfeld alluding to Senate Bill 6 and other bills which would effectively de-prioritize further renewable generation in favor of natural gas as a backstop. In California, SB Energy is helping its customers meet their resource adequacy requirements.
The company also plans to introduce high-capacity renewable products to the mix as it seeks to offer flexible clean energy resources to emerging corporate such as data center owners, load serving entities such as utilities or even green hydrogen developers in need of excess renewable capacity to develop GH2.
“If larger corporates want to buy higher capacity, whether it be solar or storage, then we want to be able to provide it,” said Hossfeld alluding to Texas as a primed market.
*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers last month.
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