Beer giant Anheuser-Busch announced Tuesday the signing of a 15-year virtual power-purchase agreement with Recurrent Energy to get a 222-megawatt (AC) job in West Texas.
It’s previously inked renewables deals with AES Distributed Energy on a 2.76-megawatt solar project in New York and with Enel Green Power for 152.5 megawatts of wind in Oklahoma.
Together with the Recurrent announcement, the company — renowned for drinks including Bud Light and the Lime-A-Rita — said it would reach its 2025 goal many years early. The Texas job, Recurrent’s biggest C&I deal to date, is slated to come online in 2021.
The job from Recurrent, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar, joins many corporate deals cropping up around Texas. Canadian Solar says it’s signed more than 1.3 megawatts’ worth of renewables project deals in the service territory of ERCOT, the grid manager for 25 million Texas customers.
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“We are seeing significant interest not only by players like Anheuser-Busch but also from conventional energy companies,” a Recurrent spokesperson stated in an email. “Solar is very cost competitive in the modern market.”
Super-low costs on power-purchase agreements under $30 per megawatt have made Texas a growing popular spot for corporate solar development. Starbucks recently signed a deal with Cypress Creek Renewables in the country, and this month Facebook announced it had made its first direct investment in a renewables project there.
According to the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, last year was a record for commercial and industrial renewables prices in the United States, together with companies procuring 6.63 gigawatts (that sum excludes on-site generation). Up to now in 2019, companies such as Gap and more typical customers like Google have signed contracts amounting to 1.49 gigawatts.
Though the entire U.S. corporate renewables market is looking increasingly varied, with small aggregation becoming more common, Recurrent’s bargain for the West Texas job appears pretty traditional: a large project with one offtaker accounting for most of the power.
Beyond Anheuser-Busch, Energy Transfer — the company behind the controversial Dakota Access pipeline — signed a contract for 28 megawatts (AC) from the Maplewood job, located in West Texas’ Permian Basin. It’s the oil and gas transport company’s initial solar contract.
In addition to diversification in the types of corporate renewables prices being struck in the U.S., the sector is attracting companies from a growing list of industries, including oil and gasoline. Shell and ExxonMobil also have signed on to solar projects in West Texas, where economical solar power is increasingly supporting the activities of the oil and gas industry.
