If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. At least that is what the song says about New York City. And it stands for energy storage.
New York City has some of the most stringent rules in the country for permitting energy storage projects, as well as an ambitious storage target of 100 MWh by 2020. But there were only 4.8 MWh of storage installed in the city at the beginning of 2017, as it is so difficult to secure a permit for a project — especially involving lithium-ion technology.
At the end of April, New York took a step toward resolving that issue with the release of the first comprehensive guidelines for installing lithium-ion batteries in New York City.
The guidelines were the result of a collaboration among the City University of New York (CUNY) Smart Distributed Generation Hub, the Fire Department of New York (FDNY), the NYC Department of Buildings (DOB), Consolidated Edison and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The guidelines are only for outdoor energy storage projects, including rooftop projects, but they represent a step forward in a multi-year process.
“Not only will the guidelines bring in more developers, I think we’ll see more movement in pending projects,” Tria Case, director of sustainability and energy conservation at CUNY, told Utility Dive.
A template approach
The CUNY guide is a “huge help because people are very uncertain about the process,” Veronica Ciechowska Weiss, a project manager with Burnham Nationwide, told Utility Dive. Burnham helps clients through the permitting process for a variety of types of projects.
The state treats the permitting of energy storage projects on an individual basis, which has led to a costly and time-consuming process, according to Ciechowska Weiss. Solar projects in New York faced a similar problem before the state came up with permitting guidelines like the ones now being developed for energy storage, she said.
“The goal is to help storage move to scale” by developing a process that provides more of a template-approach to project permitting, CUNY’s Case said.
Recent Comments