Dive Brief:
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The Oregon Public Utility Commission has released guidelines and timelines for the state’s energy storage mandate, Energy Storage News reports.
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Under the PUC guidelines, utilities are encouraged to issue requests for information for potential vendors of energy storage systems.
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Once the final regulations are approved, utilities will have been given until 2020 to procure energy storage projects.
Dive Insight:
Oregon was one of the first states to follow in California’s steps to implement a statewide energy storage mandate. The law, HB 2193, was passed in 2015. California enacted its mandate in 2013.
The Oregon law requires Oregon utilities Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp to have a minimum of 5 MWh of energy storage in service by January 1, 2020. The mandate is capped at 1% of a utility’s peak load in 2014, except for a project of “statewide significance.”
The PUC guidelines encourage projects that “stack” revenues by being able to serve multiple applications.
The guidelines also recognize that storage can be used to defer costlier investments in transmission infrastructure such as substations, as well as providing other ancillary services.
The PUC intends to hold a public meeting on or before March 31 to determine which use cases for storage are most appropriate and assess the methodologies that should be used to determine the value of storage.
The power companies will have until June to submit draft proposals and comments will be heard in July. Final project proposals would then be due by Jan. 1, 2018.
