A 208-megawatt (MW) solar farm with 80 megawatt hours (MWh) of storage has come online west of San Antonio, Texas.

Solar + storage developers Cypress Creek Renewables brought Zier Solar + Storage online in Brackettville, Texas, on May 2, 2024. Zier can produce enough energy annually to power 41,600 homes.

Cypress Creek says that ERCOT, Texas’s grid, has already used Zier to ease supply strain.

“Texas needs every available megawatt, and low-cost renewable energy has proven critical as it continues to reach new production heights in ERCOT,” said Judd Messer, Texas vice president of Advanced Power Alliance. “Solar energy is ensuring sufficient capacity during daytime peak, setting records nearly every month, and quick-responding energy storage delivers a substantial reliability benefit when demand soars or when dispatchable energy unexpectedly falls offline.”

The project will provide $11.5 million in tax revenue to Kinney County with an additional $11.7 million earmarked for an independent school district. 

Cypress Creek has a 6-gigawatt (GW) pipeline of 24 projects in construction or development in Texas. That includes a 100 MWh standalone battery storage project in Rosenberg, near Houston, expected to come online next month.

Texas is No 1 in the US for solar capacity. The state already has nearly 23 GW installed, and the Solar Energy Industries Association expects an additional 41 GW of solar to be installed over the next five years.

Read more: Solar to displace natural gas in the daytime + in summer on the Texas grid

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