PHOENIX — Strata Clean Energy is starting construction on a 1GWh Scatter Wash Energy Storage Project in north Phoenix.
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs was in attendance during the groundbreaking announcement on Thursday morning near 7th Avenue and Happy Valley Road.
While the project is privately funded, Hobbs credits a house bill for making it possible.
“Last year, I signed House Bill 2496 into law which helped mitigate the backlog that often holds up necessary projects like this one. It’s because of this smart, commonsense, bipartisan legislation that we're able to celebrate this project today,” Hobbs told reporters during a press conference at the groundbreaking ceremony.
According to Strata, the project's batteries will reportedly store enough electricity to power more than 250,000 homes, however, APS, which signed a 20-year contract to have complete control of the batteries, said it will be more around 50,000.
“We would say it's a little bit lower because they’re using a national average. For us, we tend to count homes based on the peak energy demand in the summer time when the air conditioning is running the hardest, so we would put that number around 50,000 homes,” Jacob Tetlow, the APS Executive VP of Operations, told ABC15.
The one-gigawatt battery plant will be operational in 2025 and will create about 130 jobs during construction.
Watch the full announcement and groundbreaking ceremony in the video player below.
