Home » energy storage

New York Pledges 3 GW Of Energy Storage By 2030

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

When New York announces clean energy goals, they do it in the only way the Empire State knows how to do anything: They do it big.

So it was when Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his latest bid to reclaim New York’s leadership in the clean energy push that’s sweeping through the Northeast, calling for 3 GW of energy storage to be added to the state’s grid by 2030.

“As the federal government continues to ignore the real and imminent dangers of climate change, New York is aggressively pursuing clean energy alternatives to protect our environment and conserve resources,” Governor Cuomo said in a press release. “These unprecedented energy efficiency and energy storage targets will set a standard for the rest of the nation to follow, while supporting and creating jobs in these cutting-edge renewable industries.”

[wds id=”3″]

In June, Governor Cuomo announced the State’s plan to jumpstart the development of energy storage in New York, calling for the deployment of 1,500 megawatts of energy storage by 2025, or enough electricity for 1.2 million average sized homes, while avoiding more than one million tons of carbon pollution.

To achieve the Governor’s goal, the Commission today adopted a comprehensive strategy to address barriers that have been impeding energy storage technologies from competing in the energy marketplace. These actions are intended to accelerate the market learning curve, drive down costs, and speed the deployment of the highest-value energy storage projects for maximum benefit to New Yorkers and the electric grid.

In addition to the 2025 goal, a secondary energy storage deployment goal of 3,000 megawatts for 2030 is being adopted, which was called for pursuant to legislation signed into law last year by Governor Cuomo. When implemented, the strategy adopted by the Commission today will establish a critical foundation for the emergence of this clean-tech industry across the state and support New York’s goal to create 30,000 jobs in this industry.

To further stimulate energy storage deployment across the state and spur private sector investment, earlier this week, New York Power Authority (NYPA) announced it will invest $250 million over the next five years to accelerate the flexibility of the electric grid to give New Yorkers greater access to renewable energy resources such as wind and solar power. This multi-pronged, collaborative effort by NYPA will harness the abilities of third-party providers to address key market and financial barriers, and accelerate implementation of 150 megawatts of grid flexibility projects and decrease market risk.

Both Commission actions today are the result of extensive public outreach, numerous public hearings, regional forums, active stakeholder engagement, and public comment review.

The Commission order also:

Authorizes a $310 million market acceleration bridge incentive to be administered by NYSERDA, in addition to $40 million announced in November for pairing storage with PV projects, and directs NYSERDA to file a market acceleration bridge incentive implementation plan; and
Directs the State’s six major electric utilities to hold competitive procurements for 350 megawatts of bulk-sited energy storage systems.

As more renewable energy resources, such as wind and solar, are brought online, energy storage will enhance efficiency of the electric grid to better integrate these variable resources. Importantly, energy storage will also enable these resources to meet periods of peak demand. Achieving the 2025 energy storage target will produce $2 billion in gross lifetime benefits to New Yorkers by reducing the reliance on costly, dirty and inefficient energy infrastructure, while also helping to scale up the clean energy industry.

According to a recent report by the American Jobs Project, New York is home to nearly 100 energy storage companies with expertise in hardware manufacturing, advanced materials, software development, and project management, and ranks fifth in the nation for energy storage patents due to the depth of research across its universities, national lab, and businesses.

North Carolina Releases Study On Energy Storage

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Thanks to an aggressive utility (Duke Energy) and favorable laws, North Carolina has shot up the list of solar states in terms of overall capacity, at least according to the Solar Energy Industries Association’s calculations. Other states have taken notice and are starting to emulate some of North Carolina’s policies in an effort to catch up.

Well now, the Tar Heel state is trying to lead again, this time on the subject of energy storage. And to that end, a group of experts just released a report for the state’s General Assembly to use as it tries to regulate this new energy-related market segment. To wit:

A team of experts from NC State University and N.C. Central University has released a report detailing energy storage options that the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA) can use to inform energy policy. The report has short- and long-term implications for both power grid and renewable energy development in North Carolina.

[wds id=”3″]

According to a press release from North Carolina State University, the report had been mandated by House Bill 589, which called for a report that would discuss how energy storage technologies would benefit the state as it moved into a more distributed energy future. The legislature demanded the study take into account factors ranging from immediate feasibility to potential job creation.

At the end of the process, the team of 12 experts received input from a variety of stakeholders and recommended a menu of policy choices that fall into one of three categories: prepare, facilitate or accelerate energy storage adoption within the state. As one expert said in the release:

“Options within these three categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive,” says Christopher Galik, a member of the team and associate professor at NC State. “In fact, they could complement each other. Much would depend on the particular set of policies chosen, not to mention the details of how policies are designed and implemented.”

What’s critical about this study is that it is one of the first outside of California to deal with energy storage head-on, and creates a framework for policymakers before the technology becomes widespread. An orderly deployment of energy storage should follow this report and lead to North Carolina being on the cutting edge of energy storage policymaking as the state moves forward in its own renewable revolution.

More:

Experts Lay Out Options For Future of Energy Storage in North Carolina

Q&A With Abigail Ross Hopper Of SEIA On Energy Storage And The ITC

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

The investment tax credit (ITC) has been one of the most successful methods for supporting solar development at the federal level for nearly the past decade. Under its provisions, solar consumers can take a 30% tax credit on their tax returns if they install solar electricity (though under a 2015 extension, the amount of the credit starts to go down starting in 2020.

As energy storage has become more of a factor in people’s decisions to go solar, however, there’s been a growing movement that would add energy storage projects into the ITC as a method of encouraging the growth of this ever more important market.

To that end, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), alongside a broad coalition of energy trade and advocacy organizations, sent a letter to Congress asking it to to modify the tax code to include energy storage as an eligible technology for the ITC.

SolarWakeup reached out to Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of SEIA to find out more.

[wds id=”3″]

SolarWakeup (SWup): Why now?

Abigail Ross Hopper (ARH): Why not now? It is important for our grid, has strong bipartisan Congressional support and represents a big opportunity for clean energy, particularly solar. We know there is going to be tax legislation moving in the lame-duck session, and we think this is the perfect time to get this fix done.

SWUp: Is there a bill to do this already in the works?

ARH: The bill we’re urging Congress enact is the Energy Storage Tax Incentive and Deployment Act of 2017 (S. 1868/HR 4649).

SWup: What fix are you looking for specifically?

ARH: We are urging Congress to fix the investment tax credit in Sections 48 and 25D of the tax code to include energy storage as an eligible technology.

SWup: What do you think the chances of passage are?

ARH: We know from our visits with members from the top 100 solar districts that there is broad bipartisan support for applying the ITC to storage, and we believe it has a very good chance of still being included in legislation this year.

SWup: What impact do you think this would have on the solar industry going forward?

ARH: Many of our companies are storage companies too. This is a common-sense bill that will encourage investment, jobs and accelerated deployment of solar plus storage projects across the country. It’s a no-brainer.

SWup: Are you seeing situations where not having ITC eligibility is inhibiting deals from getting done?

ARH: Yes. For example, for utility-connected storage (Sec. 48) or community solar (Sec. 25D), where the storage technology is in front of the meter, the current requirement that 75% of the electricity comes from storage serves as a disincentive for investment in solar + storage. Eliminating this would make tax equity easier to obtain.

This would also allow retrofits to qualify, and currently they only do under very specific conditions.

GI Energy Files Objection To Confusing New York Energy Storage Rules

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

New York has developed something of an inferiority complex about its renewable energy and storage market. They ceded leadership first to New Jersey, then Vermont (yes, VERMONT, of all places) and now Massachusetts gets the majority of headlines in the Northeast.

So New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, no shy retiring flower himself, has made it his life mission to seize back the headlines from his fellow Northeastern states by setting aggressive goals for both renewable energy and storage growth – and he’s not hesitant to tell anyone who is listening how fantastic his plan is going to be.

And make no mistake, Cuomo’s plan is ambitious, particularly for energy storage. Starting from zero, Cuomo has pledged to reach 1,500 MW of energy storage and put out a plan in June that would set a target at double that.

But what Cuomo seems to forget is that the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly and often painfully, and according to at least one company that desperately wants to participate in New York’s energy storage boom is objecting to the rules as they are now in place, saying they make it impossible for third-party storage projects to compete.

[wds id=”3″]

Our friends at Microgrid Knowledge have the details of GI Energy’s complaints:

Because third parties are unable to price their projects properly, they face an uneven playing field, GI Energy argues.

“And, “perhaps most confounding of all,” GI Energy writes, utilities can deem their own energy storage projects as grid assets subject to no delivery bills while third party projects are treated as new retail accounts that are billed for delivery” — as if they were any other commercial behind the meter service.

As a result, what could be the single biggest operating expense for energy storage developers remains undefined in New York, the filing states.”

How can third-party storage projects compete when they’re not sure how much the utility is going to charge them for the delivery? No, we have no idea either.

These and other rules are going to have to be hashed out right quick if New York is going to be any sort of significant player in the energy storage market, and New York is going to have to address complaints like those of GI Energy if they want to stay ahead of their Northeastern neighbors in this new race to the top.

More:

Barrier to Energy Storage in New York?