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Watershed moment in energy transformation’: Industry reacts to FERC Order 841 ruling

https://www.energy-storage.news/new...nsformation-industry-reacts-to-ferc-order-841

In the US, as with most other parts of the world, distributed energy storage can help homeowners and businesses to reduce the carbon footprint of their electricity use, back up their loads in case of emergencies and allow them a degree of energy independence from the grid.

While these are all important and worthy use cases, distributed energy storage could do so much more. The fact that the bulk of the value of that energy storage remains with the end user means that the benefits to the electricity network of putting storage on the grid are limited, while also providing barriers to capturing the value of that storage. For instance, electric utilities could make much better use than they are able to today of solar-charged energy storage systems to meet their peak electricity demand, provide grid services or defer costly investment in distribution (and transmission) network infrastructure.

Ultimately, this could provide something of a virtuous circle and mean that end users would benefit economically from widely enrolling their home and commercial battery installations into utility virtual power plant (VPP), demand response and other programmes, offering a much better return on investment and reduced payback times.

Since 2016, the US’ Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been pushing forward to do exactly this, through FERC Order 841 which demands independent system operators (ISOs) and regional transmission operators (RTOs) allow distributed storage to participate in wholesale markets. After negotiating many hurdles, including a ruling last week by a court in DC that confirmed FERC’s jurisdiction to enact the Order, this looks finally set to happen. Energy-Storage.news has collected a wide range of reactions and views from industry participants on what it means:

'This ruling will further accelerate the energy transition'

KORE Power

C&I battery storage rack and system designer and manufacturer, planning to build a 10GWh factory in the US.

• (Spokesperson)

This order allows energy storage to participate at the wholesale grid level while increasing the value and adoption of renewable and other energy sources. Energy storage now has the capacity to be treated as a true resource and we will see decreasing changes in the availability and variability in the electric grid.

Order 841 levels the field between traditional energy streams and electric storage allowing for the supply of energy to be treated equally “behind-the-meter”, regardless if the distributed electricity is newly created or stored from previous generation. Ultimately this decision will benefit the United States in its quest for energy independence, security, and reliability. This order will make our system more efficient as excess produced energy is stored and utilised to meet market demand.

This order ensures that the value of energy storage can now be maximised for all projects, regardless of asset size or physical location. The result will be a significant uptick in the number of economically viable projects, particularly in the small to mid-size energy storage market that is increasingly under-serviced by the large foreign lithium ion battery manufacturers.