Dive Brief:

• The New York Public Service Commission (PSC) released on Friday a list of preliminary priorities for an energy storage market design and integration working group, convened by regulatory staff and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). 
• In December, the PSC ordered the creation of a plan and schedule for a working group with participants from investor owned utilities (IOUs) and the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) in order to determine a path forward for storage to participate in both wholesale and retail energy markets in the state. NYISO does not currently accommodate dual participation.
• While the list of topics to be tackled by the working group is broad, the stakeholders will be "rolling up their sleeves and really looking at this from a lot of different angles, which is going to be necessary," Bill Acker, executive director of the New York Battery and Energy Storage Consortium (NY-BEST), told Utility Dive.

Dive Insight:

New York's grid operator has proposed energy storage tariffs to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that would only apply to wholesale resources, not utility retail programs. However, the state's Energy Storage Roadmap is focused on drawing revenues from both the retail and wholesale power market, which would increase the investment attractiveness for storage.

The PSC's work plan also mentioned FERC Order 841 and the use of distributed energy resources (DER) for bulk system and distribution services, specifically aiming to prioritize attempts to fast-track energy storage applications "in which use of the resource for both distribution and bulk system services does not require operational coordination."

"Having the right rules for dual participation as a state and really having better coordination between the utility programs and the ISO programs is very important for the future of energy storage and DER as a whole," Acker said.

After the PSC formally adopted Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo's 1,500 MW of storage by 2025 target, in addition to a deployment target of 3,000 MW of energy storage by 2030, New York joined several other states with storage targets, including California, Massachusetts, Oregon and New Jersey. However, due to jurisdictional differences the different states, the PSC and NYSERDA working group would be treading a lot of new ground, Acker said.

"There has been some work done in California on dual use, on kind of the different aspects of dual use," Acker said. "These are things that will certainly be discussed and will probably build on any new experience that [stakeholders have] had."

The work plan also focuses on coordinating operations among the NYISO, utilities and DER operators, and considering different combinations of roles and responsibilities for the stakeholders.

The working group will first meet on March 6, in the PSC's Albany office.