“As we think about storage at the ISO, really what we’re thinking about is how do we make sure that storage can participate as fully as possible as an asset, as a resource,” Michael DeSocio, senior manager of market design at the New York Independent System Operator said Tuesday at the Independent Power Producers of New York Spring Conference in Albany.
“We see storage as vital for the grid of the future and if you think about the stresses and strains the future grid will have, it will be an asset I think any grid operator would love to have,” he said.
The growth in intermittent renewable energy has created an important role for storage resources that can either store energy during low demand periods like windy evenings to be discharged during the day, or help smooth the transitions between high and low renewable energy production periods.
And as the use case for storage has become clear and more equipment is built, the costs are rapidly declining, which many see as a catalyst for wider deployment. Lithium-ion battery energy storage costs were $1,000/kWh in 2010 and have come down to less than $200/kWh today and are expected to be less than $100/kWh by the mid 2020’s, Jason Doling, energy storage program manager at the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority, said. Those costs are for battery packs, which account for 20% to 30% of the total installed cost of a battery energy storage system. “When we start to hit $400/kWh installed cost, really fascinating things happen because the number of use cases that economically” make sense significantly increases, Doling said.
These include distribution system relief, customer-sited storage for load relief or demand response, pairing with existing generation to operate plants more efficiently and pairing with renewables. Doling estimates that this point will be reached in the next three to five years and research indicates that around 2,000 MW could be deployed by 2025 in New York. The state has a goal of reaching 1,500 MW by that date.
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