Is New Hampshire on the verge of battery energy storage history?

Is New Hampshire on the verge of battery energy storage history?
The only question left to be settled is a big one: Should utilities own behind-the-meter batteries?

A small investor-owned utility in New Hampshire may be on the verge of regulatory approval for one of the most ambitious U.S. tests yet of utility-owned, customer-sited battery energy storage systems.

In the process, regulators and stakeholders of the DE 17-189 proceeding are wrestling with a question of vital interest to the rest of the 3,000-plus U.S. utilities: Should a utility own customer-sited storage or is it a distributed energy resource (DER) that should be left to private sector providers?

Utilities have already seen the benefits that large-scale battery energy storage offers in shaving peak demand, providing grid services, and making systems more flexible. There is a clear opportunity to use customer-sited battery storage in the same way. But the question of how far utilities can intrude into markets so far served by private sector vendors must first be answered.

Vermont goes first

The only major U.S. utility-owned, behind-the-meter (BTM) battery storage is the Green Mountain Power (GMP) pilot project, according to GTM Research Energy Storage Analyst Brett Simon. GMP, the dominant Vermont electricity provider, is installing 2,000 behind-the-meter Tesla Powerwalls that will provide dispatchable energy and other grid services to New England’s wholesale electricity markets. Customers pay a one-time $1,300 fee or a monthly $15 fee to participate.

(https://www.utilitydive.com/news/is-new-hampshire-on-the-verge-of-battery-energy-storage-history/525876/

New York Moves to Revolutionize Power Grid with System That Boosts Solar and Wind Energy Read more: New York Moves to Revolutionize Power Grid With Distributed Electricity Generation | Inhabitat New York City

New York State is proposing a revolutionary change to how utilities operate that would move away from the 20th century business model of centralized power stations to a 21st century market-based distributed energy system that would givesolar and wind a big boost.

Last week, the Public Service Commission (PSC) released a report entitled Reforming the Energy Vision calling for sweeping changes in the regulatory structure of electricity utilities to make it easier for smaller renewable energy producers such as rooftop solar owners to feed into the grid.

“The 21st century grid is going to have a lot more distributed resources,” Audrey Zibelman, chairman of the PSC, told Bloomberg News. “The scope is comprehensive: solar, energy efficiency, storage. Let’s make it the core to the redesign, not ancillary.”

Making the grid cleaner and more efficient via the distributed generation model dubbed “Utilities 2.0″ will help the Empire State meet its greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets and Renewable Portfolio Standard. With rising sea levels and more extreme weather from man-made global warming, independent transmitters and microgrids could prevent large-scale power outages such as the ones we saw in lower Manhattan, parts of Brooklyn and other areas during Superstorm Sandy.

The PSC is also calling for a restructuring of rate incentives to encourage renewable energy and energy efficiency. The agency is proposing regulations that extend the length of utility rate plans to as much as eight years and connect utility profits with the pursuit of long-term customer value.

“For more than 100 years, the generation and distribution of electricity in New York has been largely unchanged, but today we’re taking a giant step from the status quo and leading the way on energy modernization,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said. More

Reforming the Energy Vision - Report and Proposal

 

© 2014

The new hotness in energy storage: gravel

Can a humble system of gravel and a heat pump provide a breakthrough for utility-scale energy storage? British startupIsentropic thinks so, and this week announced that they’ve raised $22 million in project funding and an equity investment from the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI), a collaboration between the U.K. government and companies in the energy industry.

I covered Isentropic back in 2009, and back then the company was looking for a $5 million Series B round. The five-year-old company, previously raised a Series A round from Credit Suisse Securities Europe and won a £250,000 ($380,112) research grant from The Carbon Trust.

The innovation behind Isentropic’s idea is an advanced heat pump connected to a super simple, low cost energy storage design. Heat pumps are basically engines that can work in reverse and Isentropic’s device can store and release energy when needed. Founders and engineers Jon Howes and James Macnaghten developed the design of the heat pump a decade ago, and then brought on Mark Wagner as chairman to help with business direction.

An isentropic process (hence the name) is a thermodynamic process that can be reversed. Chairman Mark Wagner told me back in 2009 that the key to the company’s heat pump is that it can be reversed extremely efficiently, and has an isentropic efficiency (reversible efficiency) of 99 percent. More