Dive Brief:

New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium, or NY-BEST, says in a new report says the state needs to add 2 GW of multi-hour energy storage by 2025 and 4 GW by 2030.

The energy storage advisory and advocacy group says attaining that goal would enable the state to substantially reduce its costliest peak electricity demand, provide flexibility for the substantial amounts of intermittent renewables the state has committed to install over the next 15 years, and provide resilience and backup power throughout the grid.

To overcome the obstacles to achieving that goal, the group says the state needs to create new regulatory and market mechanisms to monetize the value of storage, create common financing vehicles, and create standardized codes and regulations as a way of reducing soft costs.

Dive Insight:

New York State is in the process of revamping its electric power industry through the Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) program launched by Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2014,

The program includes aggressive targets of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40% from 1990 levels, obtaining 50% of the state’s generation from renewable sources, and reducing the energy consumption of buildings by 23%, all by 2030.

In its second roadmap for energy storage in New York – the first was published in 2012 – NY-BEST says “energy storage has a major role to play in the transformation of New York’s electric grid and in achieving the goals of REV” and recommends the addition of as much as 4 GW of storage by 2030.

Specifically the group says storage has a role to play in improving the efficiency and capacity factor of the grid; integrating an increasing amount of renewable energy into the electric grid, and enhancing the overall reliability and resilience of the grid.

NY-BEST set a target date of 2017 for establishment of standardized safety rules for storage and 2018 for the New York ISO to modify its rules for the participation of storage in the wholesale market. By 2019 the group would like to see detailed distribution data and locational pricing in order to better recognize the value of distributed energy resources on the grid.

The roadmap looks at case studies from companies, including Con Edison, Stem and AES Energy Storage and was developed through a series of workshop sessions with NY BEST’s member companies and other stakeholders.