Florida Power & Light Co. executives have doubled their planned investments in battery storage projects between now and 2033, with most of the contemplated projects set to be connected to solar capacity the company is looking to build.
The latest 10-year site plan from FPL, which is owned by NextEra Energy Inc. and serves more than 12 million people, calls for the addition of 4,022 MW of battery storage facilities in the next decade. That’s up from last year’s plans to put in place 2,000 MW of projects. Speaking on a conference call discussing NextEra’s first-quarter results—net income of nearly $2.3 billion on operating revenues of $5.7 billion—CFO Kirk Crews said some of that capacity is likely to be needed earlier than the FPL team had been expecting.
“We increasingly see storage as an economical addition in our service area,” Armando Pimentel Jr., president and CEO of FPL, said on that call. “My expectations are that, as time goes on, we would likely add more storage to our plans going forward because it is that attractive in the overall economics—especially as we add solar.”
To put the more than 4,000 MW into context: FPL today has installed just 469 MW of storage spread across three sites.
Among the key drivers of the investment plans, officials said, are the need to better balance load growth and generating capacity in fast-growing parts of Northwest Florida and the Miami metro area. Other factors include limiting the curtailment of solar energy during daytime hours and managing through peak demand during evenings.
“These battery storage facilities will primarily be sited adjacent to solar throughout FPL’s service area,” executives wrote in their 10-year plan. “These additions will both improve overall system reliability and increase operational versatility due to changes in federal tax law that allow batteries to be either charged through the grid or through solar generation.”
The FPL team hasn’t changed its projected solar capacity additions over the next 10 years from the 21,009 MW outlined in last year’s site plan. If completed, those projects will grow solar’s share of the utility’s total generation to 38% in 2033 from 6% last year.
