On March 11, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (“NYSERDA”) filed its proposed Implementation Plan to administer its Energy Storage Market Acceleration Bridge Incentive Program and support the ambitious New York Public Service Commission (“PSC”) order requiring 1.5 GW of energy storage in New York by 2025 and 3 GW by 2030 (the “Storage Order”). The Implementation Plan breaks down the state’s incentive strategy primarily between “Retail Storage Incentives” and “Bulk Storage Incentives,” and provides essential preliminary details for sponsors, investors, and lenders considering energy storage projects in the state. Both programs will officially launch in Q2 2019. This article summarizes the program framework generally but focuses on the key attributes of the Retail Storage Incentives program (the “Retail Program”) and associated NYSERDA Retail Energy Storage Incentive Program Manual (the “Program Manual”). A subsequent article will address the Implementation Plan’s Bulk Storage Incentives and associated program manual.
Retail Program Funding and Scope
The Storage Order authorized a $310 million investment in energy storage deployment to be administered by NYSERDA, in addition to $40 million previously made available solely to energy storage paired with solar projects. The Implementation Plan preliminarily allocates $130 million to Retail Storage Incentives and $150 million to Bulk Storage Incentives. The Implementation Plan notes that an additional $53 million in Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (“RGGI”) funds will later be made available for retail and bulk storage projects specifically located on Long Island.
The Retail Storage Incentive will be a fixed up-front amount per kilowatt-hour (“kWh”) of “usable installed storage capacity” for projects up to five megawatts (“MW”) of alternating current (“AC”) capacity. Projects will receive an initial incentive level of $350 per kWh for the first four hours of a system’s storage duration, after which the rate will be reduced by 50% for hours five and six. No incentive is provided for storage capacity beyond six hours. The incentive is capped at 15 megawatt-hours (“MWh”).
A project may be a standalone energy storage system or paired with a solar photovoltaic (“PV”) system, and it may be interconnected behind a customer’s electric meter or directly into the distribution system. The Implementation Plan also requires that a project’s value must be “monetized under an Investor Owned Utility (‘IOU’) tariff in the form of bill savings or credits.”
Click Here to Read Full Article
Recent Comments