Masdar Marks Completion of $950 Million Lockhart Solar and Storage Complex in California

The complex in San Bernardino County has 538.7 megawatts of capacity: 365MW of solar generation and 173.7MW of battery storage. WAM said it uses more than 925,000 solar panels and 248 battery containers and can supply the annual electricity needs of about 350,000 homes and businesses. Staff, local officials, commercial lenders, project partners and customers attended a ribbon-cutting at the Hinkley site.

The project is one of the larger completed assets in Masdar's US push. The state-owned clean energy company has invested about $3 billion in the United States and plans to invest another $20 billion over the next decade, aiming to lift its US portfolio to 25 gigawatts by 2030, WAM reported. That target puts Masdar among the bigger foreign investors in American renewable power at a time when electricity demand from data centres is rising.

Khalifa Al Mheiri, chief executive of Masdar America, said the project reflected Masdar's ambitions in the US market and its aim to help meet growing power demand. He said it would provide reliable, competitively priced electricity and that Masdar wanted to expand its US partnerships and help build an energy system able to meet rising demand, particularly as artificial intelligence and advanced industries grow.

John O'Connor, Terra-Gen's chief executive, described the complex as the result of collaboration and partnerships, and said pairing solar generation with storage makes electricity supply more reliable and helps meet California's growing demand.

The power is sold under purchase agreements and long-term supply contracts with entities that distribute electricity to consumers in California, WAM said. Construction created more than 1,000 on-site jobs and 880,000 work hours over four years. The facility is expected to generate more than $40 million in property tax revenue over its operating life.

Lockhart was built in four solar phases. Terra-Gen said in July that the last of them, the 80MW Lockhart Solar PV IV, had begun commercial operation, meaning all four phases were running. At the time it said the complex connects to Southern California Edison's Kramer Junction substation through an existing transmission line and occupies about 4,000 acres of private land. It said the output from that final phase was contracted to a California load-serving entity under a long-term power purchase agreement, without naming the buyer.

Terra-Gen said in the same release that it has more than 15GW of projects in its development pipeline. That pipeline is where Masdar's planned $20 billion of additional US investment is likely to be tested.