Southern California Edison signed seven contracts for a total of 770 megawatts of lithium-ion battery-based energy storage — to enhance the regional grid’s reliability and replace four large coastal once-through cooling plants.

It’s one of the nation’s largest energy storage procurements and an indication of utility acceptance of massive-scale battery storage. Late last year, the California Public Utilities Commission urged California’s power providers and community choice aggregators to procure 3.3 GW of storage and PV-plus-storage systems to solve grid congestion and to compensate for gas and coal plant retirements.

Remarkably, SCE wants these energy storage resources online by August 2021, an aggressive timeline unthinkable for any type of fossil fuel project of this size.