DAVIS, Calif. (January 26, 2021) — With its recent approval of a new power purchase agreement, the Valley Clean Energy (VCE) Board of Directors took another big step toward the agency’s goal of providing cost-effective renewable energy—and resilience—to its customers. VCE is the local electric generation provider for Davis, Woodland, Winters and unincorporated Yolo County.
The VCE Board approved the 20-year agreement to purchase the output from the Resurgence Solar I project under development in San Bernardino County by a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, LLC. The total capacity of the solar photovoltaic project is 90 megawatts (MW) of power and 75 MW of battery energy storage. This project supplies enough to power 2/3 of the households served by VCE, and storage delivers power to the electricity grid when it’s needed most – the early evening.
“We are very pleased to work with Valley Clean Energy to help meet their renewable energy goals and bring clean, affordable home-grown solar energy to their customers,” said NextEra Energy Resources Senior Vice President of Development Matt Handel.
“This agreement, along with a series of other recent actions taken by VCE, is a turning point in our efforts to deliver cost-effective, renewable power to our customers,” said Dan Carson, a Davis City Council member and Chair of VCE’s Board of Directors. “Once the solar power and battery storage from the Resurgence Solar project come online, we project that over 60% of VCE’s power will come from renewable energy.”
Carson said that this one agreement alone will power the equivalent of 40,000 homes annually in the VCE service territory. Carson added that these types of initiatives are possible “when your power provider is a locally controlled and responsive agency with a Board that understands local needs.”
The contract includes two innovative extras, paid for by a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources and distributed over a 10-year period: a $200,000 contribution into a workforce development fund and $100,000 into a local sustainability fund.
Jesse Loren, Winters City Council member and Vice Chair of VCE’s Board of Directors said that “the Board will be looking for partnerships with local non-profits, educational agencies, and others to help solve energy-related issues here in Yolo County, or to help to train the diverse clean power workforce of tomorrow that VCE needs to serve our customers.”
“VCE has overlapping social equity and clean energy goals for our member communities that can be well served by these funds,” Loren said. “These monies demonstrate how community-based power programs like VCE can capture funds that otherwise flow out of Yolo County, putting them to work right here at home.”
“NextEra Energy Resources has a strong commitment to the communities we work in,” added Handel, “and part of that commitment is investment in local workforce development.”
NextEra Energy Resources, which has been generating clean energy for more than 35 years, is the world’s largest generator of renewable energy from the wind and the sun, operating in 38 states and Canada, with a net generating capacity of approximately 23,900 MW.
In California, NextEra Energy Resources owns and operates wind, solar and battery energy storage facilities and transmission assets in 20 counties. The company has long-term agreements for solar, storage and wind with a half-dozen community choice aggregators: Central Coast Community Energy, CleanPowerSF, Clean Power Alliance of Southern California, Marin Clean Energy, Silicon Valley Clean Energy and Sonoma Clean Power Authority.
The Resurgence Solar I project is an excellent example of responsible development and reinvestment in a brownfield solar thermal project. The project at Kramer Junction in San Bernardino County, which was purchased by a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources in 2005, operated from 1986 until it was decommissioned in 2019.
Through the contract with VCE, NextEra Energy Resources will construct Resurgence Solar on the existing site. Using updated technology, the new project will allow NextEra Energy Resources to provide VCE and its customers with renewable, clean solar energy for many years to come.
The project will require a conditional use permit from that county and an approved decommissioning plan from the California Energy Commission, said Gordon Samuel, VCE’s Assistant General Manager and Director of Power Resources.
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About VCE: Valley Clean Energy is a not-for-profit public agency formed to provide electrical generation service to customers in Woodland, Davis, Winters and the unincorporated areas of Yolo County. Its mission is to source cost-competitive clean electricity while providing product choice, price stability, energy efficiency, greenhouse gas emission reductions and reinvestment in the communities it serves. For more information about VCE, visit valleycleanenergy.org or call 855-699-8232.