TotalEnergies has started commercial operations of Myrtle Solar, a 380 MW solar farm located south of Houston, co-located with 225 MWh of battery storage.
With 705,000 ground-mounted photovoltaic panels installed over an area equivalent to 1,800 American football fields, Myrtle produces enough green electricity to cover the equivalent consumption of 70,000 homes.
About 70% of Myrtle’s capacity will supply green electricity to the company’s industrial plants in the U.S. Gulf Coast region. It is part of the company’s “Go Green” Project, which will enable the company to cover, by 2025, the power needs and curtail the Scope 1+2 emissions of its industrial sites in Port Arthur and La Porte in Texas and Carville in Louisiana.
The remaining 30% of Myrtle’s capacity will supply green electricity to Kilroy Realty, a publicly traded real estate company, under a 15-year corporate power purchase agreement indexed on merchant prices.
In addition to the photovoltaic installations, the solar power plant also features battery energy storage equipment to meet the need for grid stabilization. The storage is made of 114 energy storage systems containers designed and assembled by TotalEnergies affiliate Saft.
“This startup is another milestone in achieving our goal to build an integrated and profitable position in Texas, where ERCOT is the main electrical grid operator,” says Vincent Stoquart, senior vice president, renewables, at TotalEnergies.
Myrtle was initially developed by SunChase Power and Eolian.
