Oregon has become the latest US state to lay out its foundations for electricity companies to procure and deploy energy storage systems, with the state Public Utility Commission (PUC) providing guidelines and timelines.
The state actually enacted bill HB2193, which would authorise utilities to explore the possibilities of deploying energy storage for reasons including deferring spending on transmission infrastructure, back in 2015. The latest document to emerge from the PUC gives details on how it sees that electric companies with over 25,000 retail customers could select storage system providers and present project proposals to the commission. Once approved, they have been given until 2020 to procure projects.
This would apply to two utilities, Pacificorp, trading as Pacific Power, and Portland General Electric Company (PGE). While the systems should have over 5MWh storage capacity each, they would also be capped at 1% of the utility’s peak load in 2014, except, the PUC said, for a project of “statewide significance”. Utilities will be allowed to recover the costs of projects from ratepayers.
GTM Research’s recent report on third quarter 2016 activity in energy storage in the US highlighted policy moves to spur on energy storage development in Oregon and in Massachusetts as two of the states following national leaders California and New York’s lead in recognising the value of energy storage. Massachusetts has determined that it will implement procurement targets for storage, although it has yet to rule on their size or timescale.
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