Soli Shin, Nicholas School MEM’18

Now that a fully-stacked FERC is the new normal, there has been a lot of backlog being cleared. One of the most exciting developments to come out of the regulatory office is Order No. 841, which has significant impact on the future of energy storage for the nation’s grid. Issued in February 2018, Order No. 841 requires each RTO/ISO to revise their tariffs to adequately compensate storage resources and to remove barriers to participation in the energy, capacity, and ancillary services markets. For example, minimum size requirements exceeding 100 kW have been done away with. Experts like Sally Benson, co-director of Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy, acknowledges that R&D efforts no longer apply to battery technology and that effort is better spent on molding better business cases and policies. Utility Dive reports that it will be another nine months before we see details under new tariff filings from RTO/ISOs. And while it will be another year before we see these tariffs being implemented, it sends a signal to storage developers that the markets will be ready. The Brattle Group suggests that while there is still a huge amount of uncertainty, this order could unlock roughly 50,000 MW of storage across the country.

To read more about FERC order No. 841: FERC Order 841: Electric Storage Participation in Wholesale Power Markets

To read about the science of energy storage: Science Module: Energy Storage