Significant Victory for the Energy Storage Industry

Energy storage has the ironic virtue of helping out so many consumers of electrical power that it makes it hard to figure out how to integrate it into the market.

It helps:

• generation, by replacing expensive peaker plants,

• grid operators, by providing them one more option in meeting demand cost-effectively

• transmission, by storing energy locally, rather than importing it over large distances,

• distribution, by helping manage wave form and frequency, and

• residential or business customers, by enabling them to avoid buying electricity when prices are high, and by helping them make use of self-generated renewables.

Now, the energy storage industry has won a legal victory, as a federal appeals court has cleared the way for transmission grid operators across the country to open their markets to energy storage, including aggregated batteries connected at the distribution grid or behind customers’ meters.

From GreenTech Media: Friday’s court opinion (PDF) declared that FERC has jurisdiction over how energy storage interacts with the interstate transmission markets it regulates, even if those systems are interconnected to the grid under regulations set by the states. 

We’re making progress.