A Montana utility case pending before federal regulators could set a precedent for how energy storage facilities paired with renewable generation will be treated under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), a 1978 law intended to increase competition in power generation.
This summer, Northwestern Energy asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to revoke qualifying facility (QF) status under PURPA for four wind-plus-battery facilities a developer is trying to site in its Montana service area. The federal law compels utilities to purchase power from QFs.
Developer Caithness Beaver Creek has QF status for four planned 80 MW wind facilities paired with battery storage. Northwestern argues their status should be revoked because the addition of batteries violates generation sizing requirements under PURPA.
The case comes in the middle of FERC’s ongoing review of its implementation of PURPA and would be the first ruling directly addressing paired storage facilities under the law. Utility trade group Edison Electric Institute asked FERC to put the case on hold until the commission completes that review, but one federal regulator said it is still in its early stages.
Northwestern v. Caithness
FERC today has little experience relating energy storage to PURPA. In the 1990 case Luz Development and Finance Corp., FERC found that a standalone storage project could receive QF status if it is charged with renewable energy, but the agency has not yet considered how to treat paired storage projects, like the Beaver Creek facilities.
Northwestern filed with FERC in late August, arguing the Beaver Creek batteries should be considered separate facilities from the wind turbines. If not, the utility said the combined facilities would violate PURPA’s 80 MW capacity limit.
“Integrating battery storage facilities with a wind farm in these circumstances is simply a combination of power production facilities,” the utility wrote. “There is no precedent for the proposition that a battery storage facility’s capacity can be deemed to be zero simply because the battery may receive charging energy from another QF or because the battery storage facility is to be ‘integrated’ with an existing QF.”
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