A new roadmap outlining how New York can meet ambitious energy storage targets has been welcomed as “comprehensive and thoughtful,” including proposals to incentivise deployment.
The US state aims to get to 6GW of energy storage by 2030 – equivalent to 20% of its expected peak load – helping enable it to meet 70% of electricity demand with renewable energy.
Those goals were set as part of New York State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act legislation. As reported by Energy-Storage.news on 22 December, the New York Climate Action Council produced a Scoping Plan to outline how the Act’s policy targets, building up to a zero-emissions electricity sector by 2040, could be achieved.
Following on from the plan’s publication, the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency (NYSERDA) and New York’s Department of Public Service (DPS) finalised and published the energy storage roadmap on 28 December, just a few days short of its publication deadline for the beginning of 2023.
NYSERDA programmes for 4.7GW procurements
Primary among six main proposals in what has been dubbed Energy Storage Roadmap 2.0 is that NYSERDA-led programmes will procure 4.7GW of energy storage for the state across three main market segments: bulk (aka utility-scale, large-scale or grid-scale), retail (aka commercial and industrial and community) and residential.
Around 1.3GW has already been contracted and committed to, meaning the new proposals should bring New York to the full 6GW.
Regular readers of this site may have seen that NYSERDA VP for distributed energy resources David Sandbank offered some hints a few months ago at a presentation on the proposed solicitations and incentive schemes.
Sandbank had said grid-scale tenders were likely to be introduced within about a year of the roadmap’s publication if approved by regulators, while existing incentives in the retail market segment would be continued.
The NYSERDA VP said meeting New York’s goals on climate crisis mitigation and air pollution reduction through transition to renewable energy and electrification of buildings and transport, requires several things to happen, from buildout and upgrades of transmission networks to retirement of fossil fuel power plants for replacement with renewables.
However, none of those other steps could really proceed without large amounts of energy storage available to leverage, because energy storage technologies would improve the efficiencies and lower costs of all those other steps, Sandbank said.
New York projects to compete for Index Storage Credits
NYSERDA and DPS proposed introducing Index Storage Credits (ISCs), a new mechanism whereby developers and their projects will take part in competitive solicitations.
NYSERDA would tender for 3,000MW of ‘bulk’ storage with up to 4 hours duration, then buy ISCs from winning projects. NYSERDA and DPS said the mechanism would provide long-term certainty for investors and bring online vital storage facilities at lowest cost to New York consumers.
In a statement sent to media including Energy-Storage.news, Key Capture Energy, a battery energy storage system (BESS) developer and independent power producer (IPP), welcomed the bulk incentive programme.
Key Capture Energy (KCE) was actually first to complete a grid-scale battery project in New York and among the first to qualify for Roadmap 1.0’s incentives.
KCE CEO Jeff Bishop said that his company put its headquarters in Upstate New York in 2017 due to the state’s commitment to battling the climate crisis. In addition to 44MW of projects already in operation or under construction in New York, KCE has nearly 1,000MW under development there too.
“NYSERDA’s Energy Storage Roadmap 2.0 will continue to move New York forward to zero emissions by 2040, as mandated by the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act,” Bishop said.
Meanwhile Dr William Acker, executive director of NY-BEST, a trade association and technology development accelerator, said Roadmap 2.0 recognised “the critical role for energy storage in meeting our climate goals and enabling an emissions-free electric grid and puts New York on a path to deploying 6GW of energy storage by 2030, reinforcing New York’s position as a global leader in energy storage and growing clean energy jobs in the state”.
“NY-BEST congratulates NYSERDA and DPS on the comprehensive and thoughtful Roadmap, and we look forward to working with our members and State partners to unleash the many benefits of energy storage on the electric grid,” Acker said.
The roadmap is available to view publicly, and comments are welcomed ahead of further decisions to be taken on it during this year. NYSERDA and DPS claimed the impact of the roadmap’s proposals on consumer bills would be limited to roughly US$0.46 extra per month.
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