Danish Fields: Harnessing the Texan Sun to Boost our Decarbonization Drive

As the fourth sunniest state in the United States, Texas is an ideal location for developing solar energy. In 2022, Texas was also the country’s biggest electricity user, so it was only natural that TotalEnergies should operate its largest solar power plant in the United States; Danish Fields, in the heart of the Lone Star State, just a few kilometers from Houston and covering almost 2,000 hectares. It develops a capacity of 720 MWp and is reinforced with a 225 MWh battery-based storage system.

In 2021, TotalEnergies acquired a portfolio including 2.2 gigawatts (GW) of solar energy projects and 600 megawatts (MW) of battery-based storage projects, all located in Texas, from Sunchase Power, a US-based solar developer. One of the projects was the Danish Fields solar power plant, which was under construction at the time. Three years later, in 2024, Danish Fields came on stream and began supplying electricity to around 300,000 homes at full capacity.

Operated wholly by TotalEnergies, Danish Fields benefits from the latest technological advances to improve solar energy production. Its bifacial monocrystalline panels collect sunlight from both sides, which increases the plant’s power output. When the sun is not shining or during the night, the battery-based ESS comprising 114 Saft containers takes over by delivering a reliable and stable supply to the grid.

Solar energy to decarbonize our activities and those of our customers

In addition to providing renewable electricity to the Texan population, Danish Fields is central to two Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) aimed at decarbonizing both our activities and those of our customers:

• Through a 1-GW PPA, Danish Fields and Myrtle (another 380 MW Texan solar power plant) cover part of the electricity used by our American industrial sites. These include the Port Arthur refinery and petrochemicals platform (Texas) and the petrochemical plants in La Porte (Texas) and Carville (Louisiana), as part of a wide-ranging decarbonization project codenamed GoGreen.
• Another 15-year PPA signed in 2023 aims to supply 300 MW of renewable electricity to building materials company Saint-Gobain entirely from the electricity generated by the Danish Fields plant. This electricity will power Saint-Gobain’s 125 North American industrial sites, thereby helping reduce their carbon emissions by 90,000 tons per year.

Danish Fields: a project driving our Integrated Power strategy in the United States

The United States is a key country for deploying our Integrated Power strategy, which aims to replicate our integrated Oil & Gas model across the entire electricity value chain. In just a few years, we have forged our reputation as one of the leading renewable energy developers in the United States through such large-scale solar projects as Danish Fields and Myrtle, distributed solar production, and best-in-class onshore and offshore wind projects. To compensate for the intermittent nature of these renewable assets, we are developing battery-based storage capacities and gas-based electricity generation through our combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plants.