From pv magazine USA
A new white paper from UK-based energy services provider GridBeyond shows how regulatory policies and specific market drivers dramatically affect utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) availability and economics in the United States.
The report focuses on the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) service areas, which the authors said represent the bulk of the current US energy storage market, with about 80% of new battery installations going into these regions in recent years.
According to Alden Phinney, a regional director of GridBeyond and a co-author of the report, an interesting aspect of CAISO and ERCOT is that, despite having completely different structured electrical markets, both are growth regions with great potential for energy providers with front-of-the-meter (FTM) battery storage systems.
CAISO requires grid-energy providers to sign resource adequacy contracts that establish a criteria for grid stability, Phinney noted, which are very attractive to developers because they offer fixed, predictable revenue.
“So, between the contracted revenue from CAISO and federal level incentives, you can pay for 70% to 80% of the project,” he said. “That’s a very attractive proposition. There’s not a ton of risk in that, at least from an energy market revenue perspective. I think that’s been driving a lot of the the growth in CAISO.”
This relates to what Phinney described as a permissive structure for energy storage supporting intermittency (mostly solar but some wind), which otherwise might drive the energy price higher. Thus, by providing grid stability, BESS also brings some order to the energy market.
ERCOT, on the other hand, is growing without many of those governing factors, Phinney said. In this case, the driver is first and foremost solar and wind’s widespread availability throughout the service area that makes renewable projects attractive. Moreover, the favorable permitting and overall business climate in Texas makes building a solar farm or a storage project a straightforward process.
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