Electrify America–backed 75MW solar farm kicks off operations | TechCrunch

Electrify America, the EV charging firm created by Volkswagen within the aftermath of its diesel emissions scandal, mentioned on Tuesday {that a} new, 75 megawatt photo voltaic farm in Southern California is now up and operating.

Electrify America isn’t working this photo voltaic farm. As a substitute, the corporate struck a 15-year virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) with renewable power developer Terra-Gen. It’s the newest growth in Electrify America’s efforts to hyperlink itself to renewable power tasks. The corporations broke ground on the plant again in February.

Your typical VPPA entails a purchaser, which pays a set worth for no matter power is generated, and a vendor, which generates the power and sells it through the grid for the client at market charges. The customer assumes some threat, as a result of the vendor would possibly wind up promoting the power beneath the fastened charge. But, the client may additionally see the upside if market costs pattern above the fastened charge.

In different phrases: Electrify America is taking over some threat with this deal, and in trade it will get to say it’s serving to clear up the grid whereas doubtlessly benefiting from rising power costs.

Renewable power builders play a vital function in decarbonizing the grid, however simply how far do VPPAs go in mitigating local weather change? This appears to be an open query. Even Electrify America’s press launch leaves some wiggle room on this entrance: “This model new building contributes to ‘additionality,’ by producing new renewable power that could not in any other case be obtainable,” the corporate mentioned in a press release (emphasis ours).

Would possibly one other purchaser have stepped in if Electrify America hadn’t? Like several offset-related deal, it’s tough to say whether or not the settlement is facilitating one thing that definitively wouldn’t have occurred in any other case. (In case you are conscious of any tutorial research on the environmental influence of VPPAs, please get in contact at harri.weber@techcrunch.com.)

For its half, Electrify America states that the height power its funding will generate is “corresponding to the facility drawn by 500 EVs charging without delay at a median velocity of 150 kilowatts.” The photo voltaic farm’s annual “manufacturing is projected at 225 Gigawatt-hours,” Electrify America provides. In an earlier press release, the agency claimed the result of this deal can be “corresponding to the carbon sequestered by planting almost 40 million timber.”