Eastern Oregon may soon be home to a next-generation renewable energy project. Portland General Electric is making plans to build the country’s first large-scale energy facility that combines wind turbines, solar panels and battery storage.

It’s that combination of renewable energy and battery storage that the company said could be one model for integrating renewable energy. Battery storage is often said to be the key to overcoming one of the biggest challenges with renewable power: it’s intermittent. In other words, it’s only available from wind farms when the wind is blowing, and from solar arrays when the sun is out.

by Courtney Flatt