Mixed Greens: Grid-scale energy storage coming to California

California’s big three investor-owned utilities could be required to develop 1.3GW of energy storage by the decade’s end, according to a proposal released on Monday by the US state’s Public Utilities Commission. GreenTech Media reports that the assigned commissioner ruling – which also provides for the set-up of market mechanisms to kick off proceedings as early as next year – is the result of a process that started in 2010 when California passed America’s first state law mandating the development of grid-scale energy storage.

Monday’s proposal sets out year-by-year targets for Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric across three categories – transmission, distribution and customer-facing storage deployments. It also proposes a reverse auction, similar to its Renewable Auction Mechanism, to incorporate energy storage into the procurement and planning process, as well as new distribution system planning mechanisms and customer incentive programs. The first auction, to be held in June 2014, would ask the three utilities to develop a collective 200 megawatts of storage.

As the below GreenTech Media table shows, the Commission wants the state’s three utilities to get started on this process next year, and then keep increasing their storage amounts by roughly one-third every two years to meet the 2020 goals. And they’re lofty goals – although not as lofty as the original 2010 law which mandated that the state procure enough energy storage by 2020 to meet 5 per cent of its average peak load (47,350MW in 2010). That would have added up to 2,367 megawatts of energy storage, or nearly twice the 2020 total of 1,325 megawatts the new proposal calls for.

In other news…

Australian REC trader Greenbank Environmental has announced the first successful trade of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) created by a piggery under the Carbon Farming Initiative. Greenbank says the project will reduce the farm’s power bills, cut greenhouse emissions from methane and create ongoing revenue streams for the farmers.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger – who is visiting Australia and will meet with the PM in Perth today – have written a joint opinion piece to urge global action on climate change. The article, to be published in News Limited newspapers, stresses that Australia and California are not alone in acting on climate change, and says that by the end of the year more than 1 billion people will be living in a state or country where a price on carbon is in place.