While the overall volume of energy storage deployments in the United States remains relatively modest, the technology is gaining more and more traction with utilities and policymakers, as evidenced in North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center’s (NCCETC) latest 50 States of Grid Modernization report.
NCCETC found that among the 33 states that took legislative or regulatory action on grid modernization in Q3, 26 took some sort of action on energy storage. This includes not only the usual suspects of California, and the Northeastern states, but also an increasingly broad group of states in the South, the Mountain West and the Midwest.
In fact, among the top policy actions identified by NCCETC during the quarter is a move by regulators in both Washington State and New Mexico to require utilities to fully evaluate energy storage alongside other options in their integrated resource plans.
In many cases regulators are simply calling for utilities to deploy energy storage, and NCCETC found 14 policy actions related to storage deployment during Q3.
Utilities discover batteries
But far from having storage forced upon them, many utilities are seeking to deploy batteries and other forms of energy storage. During Q3, an administrative law judge in Texas has recommended that AEP be allowed to own battery storage, after the utility proposed deploying two battery storage systems to defer transmission and distribution investments.
NCCETC says that this trend goes beyond batteries. “Distributed energy resources are being increasingly viewed as a potential solution, rather than simply a challenge,” states Autumn Proudlove, the report’s author and manager of policy research at NCCETC.
A similar conclusion was reached by Smart Electric Power Association, which reported in September that the majority of utilities it surveyed planned to offer behind-the-meter storage programs for residential and/or commercial and industrial customers.
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