Dive Brief:

• The California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has voted unanimously to enact an energy storage mandate.
• The mandate requires the state's investor-owned utilities to buy 200 megawatts of energy storage by 2014 and 1.325 gigawatts by 2020. 
• This the first energy storage mandate in the U.S. 

Dive Insight: 

Not only is this mandate unprecedented in scale; it's unprecedented—period. Long viewed as the holy grail of the energy sector, storage technology is not yet cost-effective—nor can it store energy for very long. This historic mandate is intended to turn that dream into a reality. And while storage can also help utilities in many ways, there is a deep-seated fear that, sooner rather than later, customers with rooftop solar and storage systems won't rely on utilities for their electricity needs. As usual, California will be closely watched across the country.