“We almost doubled last year, we’re on track to double here again in 2019 and projections show that we are looking to triple in 2020,” Kelly SpeakesBackman, US Energy Storage Association (ESA) CEO, says.
“That’s the state of where we are,” the trade group chief adds, explaining that ESA represents all forms of energy storage, “not just lithium-ion”. Her home country’s energy storage industry is enjoying a rare degree of what she calls “extremely strong, bipartisan support,” from Congress and the Department of Energy to other administrations including the Department of Commerce.
’An efficient, affordable and sustainable grid’
This support comes because there’s a growing recognition, Speakes-Backman says, that energy storage – batteries or otherwise – is a help, not a hindrance to the grid.
“Energy storage is certainly there to integrate intermittent resources like solar and wind and help enable our grid to get cleaner, but it’s also there for grid operators to improve the efficiency of the grid, to improve resilience.
“We are there for an efficient, affordable and sustainable grid. It’s all of those things. That’s part of the reason why we’re enjoying such strong support. It’s being embodied through tremendous growth.”
Now based in Washington DC, Maryland native Speakes-Backman became CEO at the ESA in mid-2017, representing its 180 member organisations along the value chain from electric utilities to financiers, manufacturers and component suppliers at events and in the corridors of power.
Fast-moving tech vs incumbent frameworks
A former Maryland Public Service Commissioner in the early 2010s, Speakes-Backman understands the pressures that those coordinating electricity networks face. She says that educating stakeholders remains a crucial part of ESA’s work.
“By that (‘stakeholders’) I mean decision makers like big commissioners, federal commissioners, independent system operators, utilities who are part of our membership, helping people understand what storage is, and what it isn’t.
“As much as we’re an enabling technology, we’re disruptive to the regulatory frameworks that exist both at the federal level and at the state level. We’re not necessarily generation, not necessarily transmission, we’re not really distribution but we can be all of those things in a single asset and that’s different than what typically been considered in long-term planning. So, it is disruptive.”
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