WASHINGTON — Energy storage facilities should be permitted to provide multiple services and earn both cost- and market-based revenue streams, FERC said last week in a policy statement clarifying its prior rulings on the issue.
“Enabling electric storage resources to provide multiple services (including both cost-based and market-based services) ensures that the full capabilities of these resources can be realized, thereby maximizing their efficiency and value for the system and to consumers,” the commission said in the statement, which was approved on a 2-1 vote (PL17-2).
The commission said that storage resources, which can switch from providing one service to another almost instantaneously, may not be cost competitive without multiple revenue streams.
Chairman Norman Bay and Commissioner Colette Honorable said their position is supported by most of those who testified at the commission’s technical conference Nov. 9 or provided comments afterward. “Commenters believe that the key question is not whether to allow multiple-use applications for electric storage resources but how to allow and enable such applications,” they said. (See FERC Panelists Debate Storage Uses, Compensation.)
Bay and Honorable said the statement was needed to address “potential confusion” over FERC precedent in two previous rulings.
Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur dissented. LaFleur wrote that she agreed that the “commission should be flexible and open to proposals that go beyond the model contemplated” in the prior orders but said the issue should have been considered as part of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking the commission issued Nov. 14. (See FERC Rule Would Boost Energy Storage, DER.)
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