Energy Storage Projects Becoming Reality

Energy storage has been a buzz-phrase for many years, but it has never really been ready for prime time until now.  This is especially true in California, and in fact PG&E recently filed for California PUC approval to develop 4 battery storage facilities encompassing 2,270 megawatts, the first of which could come online as early as 2019.  The large electric utilities in the state are required to procure 1,325 megawatts or energy storage by 2020, which means that there is a built-in market mechanism in the state.

Why the Emergence of Energy Storage is Accelerating

Energy storage technologies are now viable mainly because the costs to build them have fallen dramatically, and because regulations are increasingly encouraging or mandating that electric utilities increase the percentage of renewable energy in their overall power portfolios.

The clean energy push somewhat relies on energy storage, because it can be used to help integrate and stabilize renewable energy coming into the grid.  This is why FERC recently voted to allow energy storage to be bought and sold in wholesale markets.

To sum it up: the transactional market has been set up, the utility companies are incented to invest in the technology, and the cost of doing so is on the decline.

Now, it’s not all glitter and sunshine when it comes to this new technology.  Although development costs have decreased, operational costs are still 2-4 times higher than the costs to operate a natural gas plant.  The gap is getting smaller, but it still represents a hurdle.

That being said, it’s only a matter of time before the technology becomes mainstream.  From an emergency preparedness perspective, I hope energy storage becomes viable sooner rather than later, because it provides another alternative to combat global warming and the destructive, volatile weather that comes along with it.