The U.S. energy storage market is growing rapidly — expected to double this year after nearly doubling in 2018, according to Speakes-Backman.
The ESA initiative seeks to steer the storage industry from the pitfalls of expanding too quickly without safety standards.
“If you look at the trajectory of some other industries that kind of went gangbusters in growth but didn’t take care of this at the early onset, there were some missteps,” Speakes-Backman told Utility Dive.
Duke is planning to install about 400 MW of battery storage over the next decade based on its various integrated resource plans, spokesperson Randy Wheeless told Utility Dive. Duke also has a commercial arm that launched battery projects in Texas and Ohio.
“I think we can’t do this energy storage widespread deployment without [utilities]. We can’t do it without third parties either,” Speakes-Backman said.
The company’s emerging technology innovation center outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, has been testing storage technology over the past 10 years.
“Over the decade, we’ve probably piloted batteries from every manufacturer out there,” Wheeless said. “Safety is a concern.”
Duke is currently seeking regulatory approval for a solar-plus-battery project outside of Asheville. The Hot Springs Microgrid project will consist of a 2 MW solar facility and a 4 MW lithium-based battery storage facility.
The company also powers a communications tower in the Smoky Mountains with a microgrid. That facility pairs a 10 kW solar array with a 95 kWh zinc-air battery, “which doesn’t have the fire hazard of a lithium-ion,” Wheeless said.
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