Southern California Edison (SCE) has selected five energy storage companies to provide 261MW of grid-connected storage by 2021.
STEM will provide 85MW of behind-the-meter-storage, 50MW from Advanced Microgrid Solutions of battery-based “hybrid electric building” projects; Ice Energy 25.6MW of thermal energy storage; while NRG Energy will develop a 0.5MW grid-tied battery energy storage system.
More than 24 contracts will be awarded to energy storage companies. The largest system will be a 100MW grid-tied battery system in the West LA Basin region that will be developed by AES Energy Storage.
The procured storage capacity, which will form part of the California Public Utilities Commission’s groundbreaking mandate for utilities to procure 1.3GW of energy storage by the early 2020s, is aimed to increase reliability and enhance SCE’s ability to provide energy resources to Californian consumers.
SCE takes this action after it issued a Local Capacity Requirement RFO in September 2013 to replace generation units and invest in 50MW of storage.
“This decision by Southern California Edison shows that when energy storage is measured competitively against traditional energy assets, it proves to be a critical component and vital tool for resource planners to create a more reliable, flexible grid infrastructure,” said Matt Roberts, Executive Director of the Energy Storage Association (ESA). “No utility has made this large of a simultaneous investment in grid-tied and customer-owned energy storage systems before,” he added.