1 GW Green Energy Storage Facility in Mexico Could Open Power Trading Opportunities with US

January 2nd, 2011 by Mridul Chadha

Mexico is building a green energy storage facility with a capacity of 1000 MW at Mexicali, Baja California. The project will be carried out by Rubenius, a Dubai-based alternate energy and smart gird solutions provider. The facility would require an investment of $4 billion and is expected become operational in five to seven years.

During the announcement of the project, Mexico’s President Calderon emphasized on the need of energy storage facilities to ensure an increased contribution of renewable energy sources in power generation. Pointing out the intermittent nature of renewable energy-based power, he justified the establishment of the project.

President Calderon also pointed out that Northern Mexico is rich in renewable energy resources, specifically solar energy in Sonara and wind energy in Baja California.

Rubenius announced its plans of increasing market share in the clean energy markets in Mexico and the United States. The company also announced that it would offer its smart gird and off-grid energy solutions to the Mexican government which plans to establish pilot projects to try out off-grid power systems in its remote towns and cities which will be based on either solar energy or wind energy.

Rubenius will open its research and development facility in San Diego. The company is likely to launch new products and services to make the most of the pro-investment policies of California in the renewable energy sector.

During the earlier discussions between Rubenius and the government of Mexico, the possibility of power trading with California was also discussed. Grid connectivity is available between Baja California and the US which could be for supplying power (generated from large solar energy power plants located in California) to the storage facility and then supplied back during peak hours.

The storage facility wil make use of high-capacity sodium sulfide batteries. These batteries have very high efficiency of about 89 percent and can be used continuously due to reversible charging and discharging cycles. For more information about sodium sulfide batteries, read The Energy Blog.

Image: Duke Energy at Flickr/CC

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Tags: Baja California, California, Mexicali, Mexico, Power Storage, Rubenius, Sodium Sulfide Batteries

About the Author

Mridul Chadha currently works as Head-News & Data at Climate Connect Limited, a market research and analytics firm in the renewable energy and carbon markets domain. He earned his Master’s in Technology degree from The Energy & Resources Institute in Renewable Energy Engineering and Management. He also has a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering. Mridul has a keen interest in renewable energy sector in India and emerging carbon markets like China and Australia.

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Rif

1GW is flow of power, more interesting would be to know the energy capacity in GWh or GJ.

Power (Watt) Energy (Joule or Watt-hours)
mds

You mean a capacity of 1GWh?
Rasmus

Why not just invest in nuclear power, the cleanest energy of all, with all that money ? Then no energy storage is needed. Thermal desalination is an added plus, and will be greatly appreciated in the US Southwest. And regarding that “waste” issue that everybody immediately brings up knee-jerk style when the word “nuclear” is uttered: let’s be clear that there is no such thing as nuclear waste: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv-mFSoZOkE
Karl Wahlin

With the rapid speed of technological improvements 5-7 years seems like an awfully long time to plan for such an expensive project. Is this typical of such large energy projects?