James Robinson, from GI Energy’s development team, recently attended the Storage East conference in Washington DC. FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee and Con Edison’s Adrienne Lalle were two highlights.
The energy storage industry is excited by recent local, state, and federal policies and targets aimed at drastically increasing the number of storage projects on the East coast, including a 200 MWh goal implemented by Massachusetts (by 2020), a 1500 MW goal implemented by New York (by 2025) and a 2000 MW goal implemented by New Jersey (by 2030).
FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee (@FERChatterjee) spoke about FERC’s continuing push for grid operators to allow energy storage assets to participate in wholesale markets. FERC orders 841 and 845 are still being implemented by the regional transmission organizations (RTOs), a process which will continue over the coming months. Chatterjee indicated that FERC sees these two orders as only the beginning of the process of increasing energy storage participation in FERC adjudicated markets. More details of the speech can be found in Utility Dive’s Gavin Bade’s (@GavinBade) recently published article.
Con Edison (@ConEdison) had several panelists and presenters present, including Adrienne Lalle who presented on the joint Con Edison/GI Energy demonstration project. Adrienne presented on how the business model demonstrated by GI Energy’s project aligns the energy storage systems’ size, location, and dispatch schedule with the utility’s needs, in order to maximize the potential of energy storage to bring value to the distribution system.
