New York Solicits Public Comments on Energy Storage Roadmap, Including $350 Million in Incentives

Last month, New York released its Energy Storage Roadmap, identifying a range of policy, regulatory, and programmatic actions that the state and market actors can undertake to achieve New York’s goal of installing 1,500 MW of storage by 2025.  The Roadmap is one piece of Governor Cuomo’s Reforming the Energy Vision strategy, which proposes that 50% of the state’s electricity needs come from renewable energy sources by 2030.

The Roadmap makes seven broad recommendations:

  1. Retail Rate Actions and Utility Programs.  The Roadmap proposes to “[i]mprove . . . retail [rate design] to send more accurate price signals that correspond to the system‐wide and locational value of peak load reductions and to reduce financing barriers.”
  2. InvestorOwned Utility Roles.  This proposal is aimed at enabling development of a market‐based storage sector.  The Roadmap proposes to align utility incentives to that end by clarifying the role and business model for investor‐owned utilities to manage the full customer bill and leveraging assets, such as storage and non‐wires alternatives (NWAs).
  3. Direct Procurement Approaches through NWAs, Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) and New York State Leading by Example.  The Roadmap proposes to “[e]xpand the market by employing direct procurement approaches through utility NWAs,” as well as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s (NYSERDA) RECs that can pair large‐scale renewables with energy storage.  It also proposes to leverage the state’s purchasing power to act as a catalyst for early adoption of storage to power public buildings.
  4. Market Acceleration Incentive.  Department of Public Service Staff recommends “establishing an approximately $350 million bridge incentive statewide . . . to accelerate adoption of customer-sited storage and storage sited on the distribution or bulk systems, including pairing with [solar photovoltaic systems].”
  5. Addressing Soft Costs Including Barriers in Data and Finance.  Here, the Roadmap proposes to “[p]ursue cross‐cutting actions to reduce barriers including expanding access to more granular system load data to target highest‐need locations on the electric system, lowering costs (e.g., permitting, interconnection, and capital costs), and insuring access to a skilled workforce.”
  6. “Clean Peak” Actions.  This proposal is aimed at aligning “storage approaches with Department of Environmental Conservation . . . draft combustion turbine peaking unit regulations to reduce NOx and develop approaches to differentially value peak carbon reductions.”
  7. Wholesale Market Actions and Distribution / Wholesale Market Coordination.  The Roadmap recommends developing “approaches to directly or indirectly access wholesale market values (including capacity and ancillary service values) by modifying wholesale market rules to better enable storage participation, including dual market participation (i.e., where storage provides both distribution system and wholesale system services).”

The Department of Public Service and NYSERDA will convene technical conferences on August 7 and 21 to facilitate broad stakeholder engagement in the Roadmap.  All interested parties are invited to submit comments by September 10 and reply comments by September 18 in Case No. 18-E-0130, In the Matter of Energy Storage Deployment Program.

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