Dive Brief:
-
The New York State Public Service Commission has granted Consolidated Edison permission to allow battery storage devices to export power to the grid.
-
The batteries will discharge to ConEd’s primary and secondary voltage distribution system in response to the utility's direction during demand response events.
- The PSC’s order also directs the state’s other utilities to study the effects of allowing the export of battery storage systems to the grid under existing dynamic load management programs.
Dive Insight:
Under its Brooklyn/Queens Demand Management (BQDM) program ConEd has awarded contracts for 22 MW of demand response resources that are set to go live this summer.
The program, now known as the Brooklyn-Queens Neighborhood Program, is a high profile example of a non-wires alternative (NWA) program demonstration project under New York's Reforming the Energy Vision initiative.
Under the program, customers will be able to use installed battery storage systems to export power to the electric grid to respond to Con Edison’s calls to reduce peak load conditions in the area.
ConEd anticipates that several battery storage devices participating in the Brooklyn-Queens program in 2017 and 2018 will have energy they can send to the grid. By changing the tariff to allow those devices to export to the grid, ConEd says the PSC “provides regulatory certainty to battery storage providers that their products will be allowed to participate in future NWA projects.”
The PSC order also directs the state’s utilities to study the impacts of allowing distributed energy resources, including battery storage, to export power to the primary and secondary distribution systems, and report back their results by Dec. 1, 2017.
The commission also noted that compensation for battery storage technologies and distributed resources that are not eligible for net metering will be taken up in phase two of the PSC’s Value of DER proceeding.
“Large-scale batteries are expected to play an important role in New York’s green energy future and today’s action brings battery storage closer to a day when these systems are fully integrated into the grid,” Gregg Sayre, interim chairman of the PSC, said in a statement.