For electric utilities like Consolidated Edison Inc.’s subsidiary Orange and Rockland Utilities Inc., battery energy storage is a key component of providing reliable power, but challenges remain for storage technologies as they develop across the United States.
In March 2019, the utility announced it had selected Key Capture Energy LLC (KCE) to plan, design, install and operate a 3-MW battery storage project adjacent to its Ladentown substation in Pomona, New York, U.S., that would enable the utility to delay building costly new infrastructure to accommodate energy use at its peak, which occurs only a few times a year.
MD Sakib, section manager for utility of the future with Orange & Rockland (O&R), said the battery storage project stemmed from the utility’s need for additional infrastructure to provide safe and reliable power alongside rapid load growth in the area. “Rather than building a brand-new substation, by leveraging these distributed energy resource technologies, what we’re doing is we’re deferring the build of brand-new substations for about 10 years or so,” he said.
Battery storage technology like that in O&R’s Pomona project is gaining traction in the industry. Dramatic and recent decreases in pricing, advances in technology and more attention to improving resilience are all factors contributing to the exponential growth in energy storage markets. However, challenges remain for storage technology as it develops across the U.S., including not having enough in-field operational data, getting buy-in at the local level, a lack of sophisticated modeling tools, difficulty in determining the value of storage and the need for wholesale market rules to continue changing to account for the total value that energy storage provides to the grid.
The Biggest Challenge
According to the Energy Storage Association’s (ESA) website: “Energy storage is an enabling technology.”
The website explains that storage augments such resources as wind, solar, hydro, nuclear and fossil fuels as well as demand-side resources and system efficiency assets. It is flexible as it can act as a generation, transmission or distribution asset — or even combine all of these in a single asset.
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