EDF Renewables North America has signed power purchase agreements (PPAs) with Florida-based electric utility company JEA for the 310MW Jacksonville 5 solar project in the US.
The Jacksonville 5 solar project will include five 50MW distributed generation projects to be constructed across the City of Jacksonville. EDF secured the project last year in a competitive procurement process conducted by JEA.
JEA energy and water planning vice president Steve McInall said: “These new projects benefit the community by giving us price security for clean energy through a long-term PPA with EDF Renewables.
“They also will support JEA’s SolarMax program, which will allow large commercial and industrial users (over 7 million kWh per year) to obtain their electricity from large solar facilities. This will help to retain and attract green businesses to Jacksonville.”
The Jacksonville 5 solar facility is expected to generate enough power to meet the electricity demands of more than 48,500 average Florida homes, while avoiding nearly 448,500 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. It is equivalent of removing nearly 95,000 passenger vehicles off the street in one year.
EDF Renewables distributed solutions CEO Jamie Resor said: “Our focus is to provide fully integrated energy solutions incorporating wind, solar, storage, electric vehicle charging and energy storage management at both the grid-scale and distributed level.
“We look forward to working with JEA on a system-wide portfolio of projects to address their renewable energy objectives, and to assist the team to identify appropriate uses for innovative storage solutions to complement the solar production.”
In January, EDF Renewables secured a contract for the construction of a 212MW Morris Ridge solar project in New York from New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
The contract was part of the 2018 Renewable Energy Standard Solicitation and the solar project will be located in the Town of Mount Morris, south of the Village of Mount Morris, on 1,000 acres of land. The project will begin operations by the end of 2022.
Energy generated by the Morris Ridge project will be enough to power more than 39,000 average homes while avoiding 140,000 metric tons of carbon emissions annually.