Archive for category: Energy Storage

As we look forward to an uncertain future with COVID-19 and energy security, it is important to develop new solutions that will put resilient solar and storage within reach for everyone, including those most vulnerable to power outages and the health impacts that could result from them.

If you live in New Orleans, you know how often the electricity goes out. Advisers hired by the New Orleans City Council found that, between June 2016 and May 2017, there were a total of 2,599 outages and roughly half lasted two hours or more.

Energy storage capacity installed this year is expected to top 600 megawatts, more than double the amount of storage deployments in 2018, and annual deployment numbers are forecast to increase another sevenfold over the next five years. Unfortunately, only a small fraction of these storage installations have been developed to the benefit of underserved populations most in need of the economic and resiliency benefits that storage can provide.

California’s energy storage incentive program has been a great success, with more than 11,000 battery storage systems installed to-date. The problem is, it’s not reaching the state’s most vulnerable communities.

A memorandum issued by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development fixes a long-standing issue preventing hundreds of thousands of low-income households from realizing the financial benefits of solar.

Hurricane season is here, and South Carolina is no stranger to the devastating impacts that natural disasters and extreme weather can have on communities.

From Florida to Nevada to California, big battery projects have been making headlines lately. But a more groundbreaking movement has received far less media attention – hundreds, in some cases thousands, of small distributed solar and battery systems working together to tackle power plant-sized problems.

FERC voted this week to uphold its landmark Order 841, which states that the nation’s electric grid operators (RTOs and ISOs) must allow energy storage resources fair and equal access to provide services in regional wholesale energy markets.

When Massachusetts took the nation-leading step of integrating energy storage into its energy efficiency plan this year, it didn’t just add a new technology. It consummated a decade-long, slow-motion embrace of an important new form of efficiency.

As more people opt to receive medical care at home, access to resilient emergency backup power will need to be prioritized and made more accessible, especially to low-income households.