Archive for category: Energy Storage

Clean Energy Group has proposed a comprehensive series of new policy actions the federal government could take to accelerate the battery storage market.

The results are in from a new wind and solar study commissioned by California’s three big investor owned utilities. The main takeaway: solar paired with battery storage is just as reliable as conventional fossil fuel power plants when it comes to delivering power when the grid needs it most.

If utilities are to address increasing renewable penetration and 100% clean energy state policy goals, as well as calls for increased resiliency, distributed storage must be brought to scale and harnessed to provide real grid benefits.

Last year, with technical support from Clean Energy Group, Massachusetts became the first state to officially incorporate behind-the-meter battery storage into its energy efficiency plan, and utilities began enrolling customers across the state in a groundbreaking pay-for-performance program.

This morning, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit upheld a major federal rule (FERC Order 841) that should lead to significantly expanded battery storage use in wholesale markets across America.

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.