San Diego Community Power has lined up a pair of solar and battery storage projects that, when completed, will for about one-fifth of the community choice energy program’s renewable energy goals.
Community Power’s board unanimously amended the of a contract with the Pelican’s Jaw Solar project in the San Joaquin Valley and in a separate move, revised an agreement with Noble Solar for a solar-plus-storage facility near the California-Nevada border last week.
“These are the two largest projects that we have in our portfolio,” Kenny Key, Community Power’s director of power contracts, said at the group’s board meeting on Thursday. “They’re very critical for our portfolio and our trajectory to get to 100% (renewable energy procurement) by 2035.”
The distinctively named Pelican’s Jaw Solar LLC is a subsidiary of SB Energy, a Silicon Valley-based solar and storage developer.
The project’s solar farm is expected to generate 440 megawatts of photovoltaic capacity. On the energy storage front, the four-hour lithium-ion batteries at the site in northwestern Kern County will provide 238.5 megawatts/954 megawatt-hours of electricity.
The facility is expected to contribute 1.2 million megawatt-hours of energy per year, which will for 8% to 10% of Community Power’s 2035 renewable energy target.
Pelican’s Jaw will also help Community Power meet its crucial resource adequacy requirements that the California Public Utilities Commission imposes on the state’s electricity providers to ensure they meet demand and help prevent shortages, price spikes and blackouts.
Already under construction, Pelican’s Jaw plans to begin commercial operations by September 2026 and its developers have committed to contributing $500,000 to Community Power’s community benefit fund. The contract between the two parties will run for 15 years.
The project will create about 800 temporary construction jobs and six to eight permanent jobs once the facility is completed.
The board also approved a revision to Noble Solar’s Purple Sage Energy Center, a 400-megawatt solar farm and 400-megawatt/1,600 megawatt-hour battery storage facility that will be built by Noble Solar LLC.
The 20-year agreement will deliver an almost identical amount of electricity on an annual basis, meaning that Purple Sage and Pelican’s Jaw will combine to for as much as 20% of Community Power’s 2035 renewable energy target.
The Purple Sage Energy Center will be based in Clark County, Nev., but the site is near the California border and is interconnected with the California Independent System Operator, which manages about 80% of the electric grid in the Golden State.
Like Pelican’s Jaw, Purple Sage will use lithium-ion batteries to discharge electricity into the grid.
Fires from lithium-ion batteries have been an ongoing industry concern, but Primergy, the company developing the Purple Sage facility, told San Diego Community Power officials that “multi-level protections” will be installed at the site, including real-time monitoring, built-in aerosol fire suppression systems in each battery rack and an “easily accessible” emergency stop button.
Officials hoped to have Purple Sage up and running in 2027 but the site needs permits from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and earlier this year, the Trump istration placed a pause on approvals for new renewable energy projects so the proposed start of commercial operations for Purple Sage has been pushed back to June 2028.
Asked about the degree of risk posed if Purple Sage never gets built, Key said San Diego Community Power has built a series of financial protections into the agreement that include receiving compensation if project milestones are not met.
“This would be hundreds of millions of dollars that we would get as damages if this project doesn’t come online due to the BLM or other reasons,” Key said.
Purple Sage Energy Center officials have committed to donate $2 million to Community Power’s community benefit fund that goes to ratepayers. The project expects to create 520 temporary construction jobs and six permanent jobs.
As is common in California power purchase contracts, the financial details of the Purple Sage and Pelican’s Jaw contracts are confidential for at least three years.
Created in 2020 and serving customers since 2021, San Diego Community Power is one of 25 community choice aggregation, or CCA, programs that have been established across California in recent years to offer competition to investor-owned utilities such as San Diego Gas & Electric.
CCAs purchase electricity generation for residents and businesses in their respective municipalities. Traditional utilities such as SDG&E still provide all the other duties that CCAs do not — such as delivering power via transmission and distribution lines; maintaining poles and wires; and handling customer services, including billing.
With nearly 957,000 customer s, San Diego Community Power is the second-largest CCA in the state.
