US electric utility Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is asking regulators in California to approve proposed deals for six new lithium-ion battery storage projects.
Contracts for the projects, which would see an additional 165MW of energy storage capacity built in the state, were drawn up following a request for offers for new storage issued by PG&E a year ago.
The request was in line with requirements for investor-owned utilities in California to procure a combined total of 1,325MW of storage by 2020— of which PG&E’s share is 580MW.
Since 2015, PG&E has signed contracts for 79MW of new energy storage capacity. The first of those projects is scheduled to come online in November 2020.
PG&E’s senior director for energy portfolio procurement and policy Martin Wyspianski said: “These contracts and the storage capacity they represent will help us better integrate our growing renewable generation sources, and bring increased reliability to the grid.”
As early as 2015, PG&E started collaborating with BMW in a pilot programme to test the potential for electric vehicle batteries to provide services to the grid.
The San Francisco-headquartered utility forecasts that about 33% of its retail electric deliveries will come from renewable sources by the end of 2017. Meanwhile, energy storage will help integrate many of those resources, such as wind and solar, which are intermittent or provide peak output during times of low demand.
