How ConEd and National Grid are experimenting with energy storage in New York
Consolidated Edison is in the middle of several major projects to advance the state’s distributed grid, while working to add 300 MW of energy storage by 2023.
New York has one of the most aggressive energy storage targets in the country — originally set at 1.5 GW by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo in June 2018 and later bumped to 3 GW by 2030 in December of that year. All this falls under the state’s comprehensive Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) plan, which includes energy efficiency, storage and electric vehicle targets.
The target pushes the state’s six investor-owned utilities to procure 10 MW of storage each by the end of 2022, except Consolidated Edison, which must adopt at least 300 MW by that time.
Less than three years away from that short-term goal, two of New York’s major investor-owned utilities — ConEd and National Grid — spoke at this year’s Distributech conference in San Antonio, Texas, about the lessons learned thus far in storage deployment.
ConEd: Experimenting with financing, grid benefits for the long-game
Storage is essential to New York’s long-term climate goals, ConEd REV Demonstration specialist Alison Kling said at the conference. It can be used as grid support, including for particular feeders, real power, reactive power, or as part of broader non-wires alternative goals, but it will also be important in the long-term as the state continues to add more renewable energy onto its grid.
“We have a lot of offshore wind [expected online]. We’ve got a ton of solar already in, and already coming, so we’re going to need storage to firm up those assets,” she said. “Getting experience now in how to site it, how to integrate it, is really, really important.”
To prepare for the incoming wave of renewable power and the storage that will be necessary to support it, the utility is in the middle of several major projects that will inform the future of the state’s distributed grid.
Non-utility owned systems are expected to dominate the utility’s energy storage deployments, Kling said, and they’ve been experimenting with front-of-meter and behind the meter combinations, as well as potential applications with electric vehicles to smooth out load.
