DENVER — It’s become a cliche to compare today’s energy storage market to where the solar industry was a certain number of years ago. But storage’s trajectory differs from the early growth dynamics of solar power in a crucial respect: It transcends the geographic boundaries, dictated by sunshine and policy, that constrained solar’s rise.
Fast-acting battery technology performs many roles: frequency regulation, capacity, deferral of wires upgrades, resilience, firming renewable generation and more. It does not rely on a geographically specific weather pattern or any one set of state policies to become valuable, and it’s already asserting itself across the U.S., said Daniel Finn-Foley, energy storage director at Wood Mackenzie, speaking Tuesday at GTM’s Energy Storage Summit in Denver.
Solar reached the big time early in California, thanks to abundant sunshine and supportive state incentives. Pockets of development later formed in Hawaii and the Desert Southwest, and in the less sunny but politically supportive New England states. But it did not spread evenly, and whole regions such as the Southeast and Midwest trailed behind for years.
“Energy storage’s value lends itself to a much more diverse range of geographies,” Finn-Foley said in an interview after the talk. “It’s finding value in wholesale markets; it’s finding value in vertically integrated utility markets; it’s finding value for residential deployments — really, just about everywhere.”
Storage is still considered new and experimental in many states, but a map of where development has taken place reveals its border-crossing appeal. Here are the states that already operate more than 50 megawatts of grid storage, according to Finn-Foley’s presentation.
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