Tesla In Talks To Supply Battery Storage To Con Edison
On February 6, Orange & Rockland Utilities, a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, New York’s largest utility company, filed a proposal with the state’s Public Utilities Commission to test whether adding Tesla Powerpack grid storage batteries “can provide a range of services with costs and benefits shared by multiple stakeholders,” according to a report by the American Public Power Association. Tesla will own and develop the battery systems. It will work with O&R to develop multi-use operational strategies designed to balance power distribution among stakeholder groups that include participating customers, the distribution system, and Tesla.
“These strategies will be guided by algorithms and protocols, designed by Tesla, to deliver optimal dispatch for the aggregated portfolio, maximizing the portfolio value among customers, the distribution grid, and Tesla,” an O&R spokesperson says. “Under this demonstration, the flexible operating characteristics of distributed energy storage will be employed to obtain the highest value use of the resource at any point in time.”
The utility says that a lack of regulatory and market mechanisms in place at the present time prevents battery storage projects from spreading their cost among multiple stakeholders, which inhibits more storage projects from going forward.
“When energy storage is deployed for multiple value streams, the amount of value and revenue generated on a per unit basis increases to capture previously idle storage capacity for productive use,” according to the utility. “This additional revenue means that multi-use applications of energy storage can be economically viable in locations where single-use applications are not.”
Compared to Tesla’s giant storage battery in South Australia, the two systems included in this latest proposal are modest in size, but they could form the basis for adding more and larger systems throughout Con Edison affiliated companies in the future….
