Vistra Energy Corp. remains on track to complete a 300-MW energy storage project in Moss Landing, Calif., heralded as "the largest battery of its kind in the world" by the end of 2020, according to a company spokesperson.

Vistra started construction in December on the battery storage project, co-located at Vistra's natural gas-fired Moss Landing CC power plant on Monterey Bay, company spokesperson Meranda Cohn said in an April 17 email.

That keeps the project on its original timeline despite widespread delays reported by other U.S. energy storage project developers over the past month as a result of the economic shutdown and stay-at-home orders affecting California and the nation.

While the plans could change, so far Vistra is experiencing "no delays in our project timeline," Cohn said. The company expects to energize the four-hour energy storage system at the end of this year even though Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which has a 20-year resource adequacy contract with a Vistra subsidiary, in November 2019 received approval to delay the contract start until mid-2021.

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The PG&E Corp. utility subsidiary is developing its own 182.5-MW Tesla Moss Landing Battery Energy Storage Project (Elkhorn) at the substation next to the Vistra site but postponed its anticipated March groundbreaking until California Gov. Gavin Newsom lifts his stay-at-home order.

A recent survey by the U.S. Energy Storage Association revealed that many companies expect to see a deep downturn in the second quarter as a result of the measures aimed at fighting the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Despite the short-term hardships faced by the sector, industry officials still expect 2020 to be a growth year. Vistra, for instance, on April 15 said it will expand a previously announced energy storage project in Oakland, while several California retail power suppliers in early April approved contracts for new large-scale stand-alone battery and solar-plus-storage systems.